On the adaptive zero reaction control of free-floating space manipulators

In this paper, we investigate the problem of spacecraft attitude regulation and end-effector trajectory tracking for free-floating space manipulators with uncertain kinematics and dynamics. We propose an extended-Jacobian-based adaptive zero reaction controller for free-floating space manipulators so as to realize both the spacecraft attitude regulation and end-effector trajectory tracking. The major step for achieving this goal is the definition of two new reference velocities for the spacecraft and the manipulator, respectively, using the approximate extended Jacobian matrix. The stability and convergence of the proposed controller are derived by Lyapunov-like stability analysis. A numerical simulation is conducted to show the performance of the proposed adaptive zero reaction controller.