Application of predictive control for manipulator mounted on a satellite

Abstract

Specific conditions of on-orbit environment are taken into account in the design of all devices intended to be used in space. Despite this fact malfunctions of satellites occur and sometimes lead to shortening of the satellite operational lifetime. It is considered to use unmanned servicing satellite, that could perform repairs of other satellites. Such satellites equipped with a manipulator, could be used to capture and remove from orbit large space debris. The critical part of planned missions is the capture manoeuvre. In this paper a concept of the control system for the manipulator mounted on the satellite is presented. This control system is composed of the trajectory planning module and model predictive controller (the latter is responsible for ensuring precise realization of the planned trajectory). Numerical simulations performed for the simplified planar case with a 2 DoF manipulator show that the results obtained with the predictive control are better than the results obtained with adaptive control method.