Teleoperation of mechanical manipulators aboard the US space station

Abstract

This study presents a new analytical controller design strategy for the teleoperation of mechanical manipulators aboard the U.S. space station. This controller design strategy emphasizes on the stability of a closed-loop control system involving time delay. Simplified dynamic equations of the Stanford arm are considered as the manipulator model. A local linearizing and decoupling control algorithm is applied to linearize and decouple the dynamic equations. Once the linear form of the manipulator is obtained, a model prediction control loop is constructed and implemented as a digital controller to provide the predictive states information, and a particular model reduction method is applied to yield a reduced-order digital controller. This reduced-order digital controller is a highly self-tuned controller which can control the closed-loop system with time delay by following a specified performance.