Capture strategy for retrieval of a tumbling satellite by a space robotic manipulator

In autonomous retrieval of a free-flying object, tumbling motion makes it difficult to grapple the objects with an on-board manipulator. This paper presents a new control scheme to capture a tumbling satellite based on a simple dynamical model. The target motion is estimated based on visual information using Kalman filtering technique. The capture planning based on the proposed model becomes simple because the motion of a grapple fixture on a target satellite nearly stops relative to the end-effector of a manipulator. The validity and the usefulness of the proposed method are shown by computer simulations and experiments using a 3-D hardware simulator with 9 degrees of freedom.