Maneuver and vibration suppression of flexible manipulators for capturing unknown objects using variable-speed control moment gyros

This paper addresses the problem of trajectory control and vibration suppression of space manipulators with unknown objects. The variable-speed control moment gyros (VSCMGs) are considered as actuators for vibration suppression. The dynamics model containing the influence of VSCMGs is adopted. A singular perturbation approach is used to transform the dynamics model into a two timescale subsystem. A slow subsystem is associated with rigid motion dynamics and a fast subsystem is associated with flexible dynamics. An adaptive sliding-mode controller is designed to realize trajectory tracking. An adaptive controller is designed for vibration suppression. Based on the composite control, the steering law is designed. According to the numerical simulation it can be concluded that the proposed composite controller has an efficient performance for maneuver and vibration suppression.