Experiment on the retraction/deployment of an active–passive composited driving deployable boom for space probes

Abstract This paper presents experiments on the retraction/deployment of an active–passive composited driving deployable boom for space probes. To satisfy the requirements of accurate position tracking and unrumpled retraction/deployment of the boom, it is essential to maintain energy equilibrium in the retracting/deploying process and simultaneously compensate the model for uncertainties when controlling the deployable boom. To this end, parameter matching among the drive motor, reaction spring and lenticular boom is deduced from the energy equilibrium constraints of the system, and an adaptive controller augmented with a robust controller is investigated to compensate for or reject the effect of model uncertainties. Particularly, a terrestrial experimental setup is established to validate the efficiency of the parameter matching and the composited controller for the deployable boom. The experimental results demonstrate that the designed deployable boom can track the desired trajectory accurately with unrumpled retraction/deployment.