Abstract Spacecraft simulators are widely used to study the dynamics, guidance, navigation, and control of a spacecraft on the ground. A spacecraft simulator can have three rotational degrees of freedom by using a spherical air-bearing to simulate a frictionless and micro-gravity space environment. The moment of inertia and center of mass are essential for control system design of ground-based three-axis spacecraft simulators. Unfortunately, they cannot be known precisely. This paper presents two approaches, i.e. a recursive least-squares (RLS) approach with tracking differentiator (TD) and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) method, to estimate inertia parameters. The tracking differentiator (TD) filter the noise coupled with the measured signals and generate derivate of the measured signals. Combination of two TD filters in series obtains the angular accelerations that are required in RLS (TD-TD-RLS). Another method that does not need to estimate the angular accelerations is using the integrated form of dynamics equation. An extended TD (ETD) filter which can also generate the integration of the function of signals is presented for RLS (denoted as ETD-RLS). States and inertia parameters are estimated simultaneously using EKF. The observability is analyzed. All proposed methods are illustrated by simulations and experiments.

    Highlights Square waves torque is used as excitation for simulator parameter estimation. Recursive least-squares (RLS) with TD is presented for parameter estimation. TD (tracking differentiator)-TD-RLS is robust to noise and disturbance torques. ETD (extended TD)-RLS has good convergence speed and accuracy. States and parameters are estimated by EKF and observability is analyzed.


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    Title :

    Parameter estimation of a three-axis spacecraft simulator using recursive least-squares approach with tracking differentiator and Extended Kalman Filter


    Contributors:
    Xu, Zheyao (author) / Qi, Naiming (author) / Chen, Yukun (author)

    Published in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 117 ; 254-262


    Publication date :

    2015-08-11


    Size :

    9 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English