Quaternion-based non-singular terminal sliding mode control for a satellite-mounted space manipulator

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quaternion-based non-singular terminal sliding mode control method for satellite-mounted space manipulators, enhancing robustness against disturbances and uncertainties with proven stability and improved performance in simulations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel quaternion-based control approach with adaptive disturbance estimation for satellite manipulators, ensuring non-singular, stable, and resilient attitude control.

Findings

Controller effectively handles disturbances and uncertainties.

Simulation results demonstrate improved stability and fuel efficiency.

The method maintains non-singular attitude control using quaternions.

Abstract

In this paper, a robust control solution for a satellite equipped with a robotic manipulator is presented. First, the dynamic model of the system is derived based on quaternions to describe the evolution of the attitude of the base satellite. Then, a non-singular terminal sliding mode controller that employs quaternions for attitude control, is proposed for concurrently handling all the degrees of freedom of the space manipulator. Moreover, an additional adaptive term is embedded in the controller to estimate the upper bounds of disturbances and uncertainties. The result is a resilient solution able to withstand unmodelled dynamics and interactions. Lyapunov theory is used to prove the stability of the controller and numerical simulations allow assessing performance and fuel efficiency.