Tumbling motion reduction by contact forces with cushion damper on space robot manipulator

This paper is devoted to investigating a method to reduce the tumbling motion of a malfunctioning satellite by using collisions with a cushion damper on the end-effector of a space robot manipulator. The collision motion is modeled as the non-complete elastic collision and the forces interacting between the end-effector and the target at contacts are simulated according to this collision modeling. The collision timing is an important factor to reduce tumbling motion efficiently. Thus, in this study, active nutation. damping control method is referred to determine the collision timing. The end-effector position is controlled by a sliding-mode control which is one of the nonlinear control methods. Numerical simulations of the proposed control method are conducted to demonstrate that a tumbling motion is sufficiently reduced to a near slow single spin motion so that the space robot manipulator can capture the target satellite easily.