Abstract
The problem of dynamics and control using a space robot to capture a noncooperative satellite is an important issue for on-orbit services. Inertia parameters of the satellite should be identified before capturing such that the robot can design an active controller to finish the capturing task. In this paper, a new identification scheme is proposed for parameter identification of a noncooperative satellite. In this scheme, the space robot is controlled to contact softly and then maintain contact with the noncooperative target firstly, then the variation of momentum of the target during the contact-maintaining phase is calculated using the control force and torque acting on the base of the space robot and the kinematic information of the space robot, and finally, the momentum-conservation-based identification method is used to estimate inertia parameters of the target. To realize soft contact and then maintain contact, a damping contact controller is designed in this paper, in which a mass-damping system is designed to control the contact between the robot and the target. Soft contact and then contact maintenance can be realized by utilizing the buffering characteristics of the mass-damping system. The effectiveness of the proposed identification scheme is verified through numerical simulations at the end of this paper. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme can achieve high-precision identification results.
Highlights
The on-orbit service of spacecraft is an important research field in space technology
As the core of on-orbit service, autonomous space operation by a space robot arm plays a significant role in space activities including the capture, docking, repair, and maintenance of space structures onorbit [1]
We present a new damping contact control method for identifying all of the inertia parameters of an unknown uncooperative satellite
Summary
The on-orbit service of spacecraft is an important research field in space technology. Chu et al [16] present a contact-based inertia parameter identification method In this method, the rigid tip of the space robot is controlled to contact the unknown object firstly, and the contact force and the variation of kinematics information are used to estimate all inertia parameters including mass, mass center position, and inertia tensor. In this scheme, the space robot is controlled to actively change the motion state of a noncooperative unknown satellite by contact firstly and to gather the variation of the target momentum. To avoid the sharp change of the motion state of the target, the soft contact between the space robot and the target needs to be realized For achieving these two control goals, a new damping contact control method is designed based on the study about the two ball collision problem.
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