Vibration control of a large flexible space truss using a Stewart platform manipulator

An active vibration control strategy based on vision measurement and a Stewart platform manipulator(SPM) for a large flexible space truss was presented here. The bottom of the truss was mounted on a SPM used as the active performer while a CCD camera was used for the measurement of the vibration. An adaptive disturbance canceller(ADC) algorithm was designed, and then the control test system for the flexible truss was built based on the dSPACE real-time simulation system. Two resonance tests were conducted, in which a voice coil motor was used to excite the first-order mode of the truss as external and internal disturbances, respectively. It was shown that the vibration amplitudes decrease by more than 87.7% and 91.8% in the resonance tests with external and internal disturbances, respectively. The results showed that the active control strategy is significantly effective in vibration control of a large flexible truss, and it is applicable for a space extendable structure particularly.