Adaptive tachometer feedback augmentation of the Shuttle Remote Manipulator Control System

The purpose of this paper is to describe the work done towards modelling, design, and analysis of a joint adaptive pole assignment control augmentation to the existing servo rate feedback control system of the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS). The principal objective of the augmentation is to demonstrate improved response of the system through better trajectory tracking, lower settling times, precise end effector motion, with existing hardware and sensors. The only modification is to the joint servo software. A fixed zero deterministic autoregressive moving average (DARMA) model based adaptive pole assignment controller is augmented to all the six joints of the existing fixed gain digital controller. The success of this design approach is demonstrated in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) tracking of rates in all the joints with lower settling times and no overshoot