Research on Autonomous Docking Control Method and Experimentation for On-orbit Servicing

A new laboratory test bed of on-orbit servicing system is introduced,which enables simulation of the autonomous approach and docking of a servicing spacecraft to a target spacecraft of similar mass.The test bed consists of a servicing spacecraft and a target spacecraft simulator,which enables floating via air pads on a flat floor.The relative navigation of the servicing spacecraft is implemented by the measurements from a single-camera vision sensor through unscented Kalman filters.Six cold-gas on-off thrusters are used for the translation of the servicing simulator and a nonlinear control algorithm based on back-propagation neural network is involved for integrative control.Numerical simulation and experimental results present that an autonomous proximity maneuver and an autonomous docking of the servicing simulator connect to the non-floating target.The results presented the validation of proposed estimation and control methods.