Finite time attitude takeover control for combination via tethered space robot

Abstract Up to April 6, 2016, there are 17,385 large debris in orbit around the Earth, which poses a serious hazard to near-Earth space activities. As a promising on-orbit debris capture strategy, tethered space robots (TSRs) have wide applications in future on-orbit service owing to its flexibility and great workspace. However, lots of problems may arise in the Tethered Space Robots (TSRs) system from the approaching, capturing, postcapturing and towing phases. The postcapture combination attitude takeover control by the TSR is studied in this paper. Taking control constraints, tether oscillations and external disturbances into consideration, a fast terminal sliding mode control (FTSMC) methodology with dual closed loops for the flexible combination attitude takeover control is designed. The unknown upper bounds of the uncertainties, external disturbances are estimated through adaptive techniques. Stability of the dual closed loop control system and finite time convergence of system states are proved via Lyapunov stability theory. Besides, null space intersection control allocation was adopted to distribute the required control moment over TSR's redundant thrusters. Simulation studies have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller with the conventional sliding mode control(SMC).