12 accepted papers
In this work, we propose a novel control strategy for the displacement of an orbital manipulator equipped with a thruster module at its end-effector. In contrast to the use of base-mounted thrusters, which often leads to allocation problems and fuel inefficiencies, the proposed approach achieves cen
This paper exploits the robotic capabilities of an orbital manipulator equipped with an actuation module at its end-effector to perform close-proximity robotic operations. The proposed control strategy enables repositioning the system's center-of-mass by reconfiguring the manipulator configuration a
In the context of in-orbit assembly, modular building blocks offer the advantage of distributed launches. After the orbit-injection, the overall motion control requires the individual modules to approach each other while regulating their relative shape and the total formation. This kind of formation
This paper proposes a parameterization method to represent SO (3) over multiple turns. This method is called a memory-based parameterization, because the idea is to integrate the past trajectory of exponential coordinates. The parameterization is consistent in the sense that the true rotation matrix…
In this letter, a novel partitioned shared controller is proposed, which exploits a fully-actuated orbital robot to perform a primary end-effector task involving environmental interactions. This task is remotely performed using a bilateral teleoperation controller, while a secondary task is automati
Multi-agent control of a robot using multiple controllers is vital in domains like shared control and reliable control. The strategy of assigning a varying priority (authority) to each agent controller, and commanding the robot using an authority-weighted sum of the forces produced by all the agents…
In this letter, we propose a novel method for the on-ground simulation of a space robotic mission, while exploiting a robotic hardware-in-the-loop facility. The simulated dynamics replicated by the robots are defined with respect to a nominal motion. This approach enables simulating the motion of la
This letter presents a compliant feedback controller of an arm-equipped spacecraft, which does not enforce requirements on the spacecraft position and attitude. The controller is applicable to the pre-contact, contact, and post-contact phases of a robotic operation. In contrast to conventional float
In the present paper, we propose a novel system-driven adaptive shared control framework in which the autonomous system allocates the authority among the human operator and itself. Authority allocation is based on a metric derived from a Bayesian filter, which is being adapted online according to re…
In this paper, we propose three novel Hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HLS) methods for a fully-actuated orbital robot in the presence of external interactions using On-Ground Facility Manipulators (OGFM). In particular, a fixed-base and a vehicle-driven manipulator are considered in the analyses. T…
In this letter we design a novel control strategy for a space manipulator operating on a controlled base. The proposed controllers resolve the tracking of the end-effector and the regulation of the base. In particular, we focus on the effects due to the different sampling rates of the manipulator an
In this letter, a novel method is presented for grasping a partially cooperative tumbling satellite with a free-floating robot. A reference trajectory, provided by an offline motion planner and adapted online to account for modeling uncertainties, is tracked with a visual servo for the approach phas