Robotic Manipulation and Capture in Space: A Survey

Space exploration and exploitation depend on the development of on-orbit robotic capabilities for tasks such as servicing of satellites, removing of orbital debris, or construction and maintenance of orbital assets. Manipulation and capture of objects on-orbit are key enablers for these capabilities. This survey addresses fundamental aspects of manipulation and capture, such as the dynamics of space manipulator systems (SMS), i.e., satellites equipped with manipulators, the contact dynamics between manipulator grippers/payloads and targets, and the methods for identifying properties of SMSs and their targets. Also, it presents recent work of sensing pose and system states, of motion planning for capturing a target, and of feedback control methods for SMS during motion or interaction tasks. Finally, the paper reviews major ground testing testbeds for capture operations, and several notable missions and technologies developed for capture of targets on-orbit.

Passivity-based filtering for networked semi-Markov robotic manipulators with mode-dependent quantization and event-triggered communication

In this article, the networked filtering problem for a class of robotic manipulators with semi-Markov type parameters is investigated under the passivity framework. In particular, the mode-dependent quantization and event-triggered communication scheme are both proposed for increasing the network transmission efficiency. Sufficient stability conditions are first derived by choosing mode-dependent Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals. Then, the mode-dependent filter gains and the event-triggering parameters are further designed with the help of matrix convex optimization. In the end, a simulation example is provided such that the effectiveness of the proposed filtering method can be well demonstrated.