Whole-body motion control for capturing a tumbling target by a free-floating space robot

Abstract

This paper discusses a control strategy of a free- floating space robot for capturing a non-cooperative target. It is desirable that the base attitude deviation of the robot is minimized for accurate operation by a manipulator arm mounted on it, for communication with the earth, and the ideal contact with the target so that the target would not be pushed away, impedance control and Distributed Momentum Control are reasonable for the above two requirements. The proposed strategy includes both control methods simultaneously using the manipulator's redundancy. Moreover, a control law for reaction wheels is proposed so that the singularity problem would not happened. The proposed strategy is verified from results of numerical simulations that compare the different degree of freedom manipulator.