Vibration control of deployment structures' long-reach space manipulators: The P-PED method

This paper presents a control method called the pseudo-passive energy dissipation (P-PED) method. The P-PED method is a closed-loop control scheme for increasing the overall damping characteristics of an elastically-mounted space manipulator system. It reduces degrading base vibrations resulting from external disturbances or motion of the manipulator, thereby decreasing the time necessary to perform maneuvers. A methodology for computing the optimal P-PED gains is presented. Experimental results are presented which show that the P-PED method is viable for practical implementation.