Motion Control of Adaptive Space Structures Based on Artificial Potential Method

, Further exploiting the improved artificial potentials presented in a series of our previous studies. we propose a rendez-vous and soft docking control of an adaptive space structure with a moving target. The artificial potential is extended to include the effect of time-dependence of the target, equivalently, desired position and velocity of the end-effecter of the structure. For force control of post-docking, we also propose a less time-consuming impedance control based on the artificial potential. Numerical simulation has shown that the proposed method is very effective in rendezvous and soft docking of a space robot having a serially-linked manipulator.