Theoretical and experimental studies for continuous path control of flexible manipulator mounted on a free-flying space robot

Abstract

Some continuous path tracking control schemes for flexible manipulators are proposed by using a concept of virtual rigid manipulator. An extended local PD-control (extended LPDC), pseudo resolved motion rate control (pseudo RMRC), and pseudo resolved acceleration control (pseudo RAC) for flexible manipulators are presented. To suppress vibrating motion, a composite control with a reduced-order modal control is developed. To verify the stability, a sufficient condition for asymptotic stability of PD-control is derived. It is also clarified that the PD-control damps all the vibration modes irrespective of their natural damping. The validity of the proposed control schemes is explained through the singular perturbation method. The robust stability of the proposed control schemes is discussed. The effectiveness of the proposed control schemes is demonstrated through hardware experiments using a flexible manipulator mounted on a freeflying satellite.