Abstract Force control provided by a small-scaled free-flying space robot on a floating or spinning target will be required for future on-orbit servicing missions, such as detumbling a target, performing an assembly or a maintenance operation. Regarding to different contact geometries for a space robot interacting with a spinning target, this paper addresses the contact model considering its multi-dimensional characteristics. A hybrid motion and force controller is developed to acquire desired contact forces and space robot configuration despite the floating feature of the system. On this basis, the control strategy to implement the operations of three typical phases, namely approaching phase, contact phase and post-contact phase, is proposed. The simulations have been performed to verify the control approaches and visualize the contact scenarios.
Highlights Multi-dimensional contact models regarding to two contact geometries are formulated. Hybrid motion and force controllers for two contact scenarios are developed. A novel control strategy for typical on-orbit servicing phases is proposed. Numerical simulations based on Simscape Multibody verify the approaches.
Force control of a space robot in on-orbit servicing operations
Acta Astronautica ; 193 ; 469-482
2022-01-12
14 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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