Detumbling strategy based on friction control of dual-arm space robot for capturing tumbling target

The rotational motion of a tumbling target brings great challenges to space robot on successfully capturing the tumbling target. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the target’s rotation to a rate at which capture can be accomplished by the space robot. In this paper, a detumbling strategy based on friction control of dual-arm space robot for capturing tumbling target is proposed. This strategy can reduce the target’s rotational velocity while maintaining base attitude stability through the establishment of the rotation attenuation controller and base attitude adjustment controller. The rotation attenuation controller adopts the multi-space hybrid impedance control method to control the friction precisely. The base attitude adjustment controller applies the dual-arm extended Jacobian matrix to stabilize the base attitude. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) The compliant control method is adopted to achieve a precise friction control, which can reduce the target angular velocity steadily; (2) The dual-arm extended Jacobian matrix is applied to stabilize the base attitude without affecting the target capture task; (3) The detumbling strategy of dual-arm space robot is designed considering base attitude stabilization, realizing coordinated planning of the base attitude and the arms. The strategy is verified by a dual-arm space robot with two 7-DOF (degrees of freedom) arms. Simulation results show that, target with a rotation velocity of 20 (°)/s can be effectively controlled to stop within 30 s, and the final deflection of the base attitude is less than 0.15° without affecting the target capture task, verifying the correctness and effectiveness of the strategy. Except to the tumbling target capture task, the control strategy can also be applied to other typical on-orbit operation tasks such as space debris removal and spacecraft maintenance.