Adaptive nonlinear H∞ controllers applied to a free-floating space manipulator

This paper deals with the problem of tracking control with a guaranteed H∞ performance for free-floating manipulator systems with plant uncertainties and external disturbances. Adaptive nonlinear H∞ control techniques based on linear parametrization and neural network are applied to this kind of robot. The Dynamically Equivalent Manipulator approach is used in order to obtain experimental results in a planar fixed base manipulator. The main contribution of this paper is that the neural network is used as a complement to the nonlinear H∞ control based on nominal model, it is used to compensate only the uncertainties of the free-floating manipulator