Simultaneous Feedback Stabilization of Space Robot Attitude

Abstract

The subject of this paper is a space robot that has a manipulator arm mounted on a satellite body. This paper investigates the problem for stabilizing the attitude of both the main body of a space robot and the joint angles of a manipulator independently and simultaneously. Two control methods are proposed here for the solutions of this problem. One is a time-varying feedback controller, and the other is a time-invariant feedback controller. The former controller has the theoretical success for the topological obstructions, but has the practical disadvantage. In contrast, the latter controller has the practical usefulness in spite of the theoretical incompleteness. Furthermore, it is shown that each control method has the robustness against the presence of parametric uncertainties such as model errors and signal noises. The effectiveness of each controller is verified by numerical simulations.