Combined control for active debris removal using a satellite equipped with a robot arm

This work discusses the controller design and simulation for Active Debris Removal (ADR) based on the e.Deorbit scenario using a chaser satellite with a seven axis robot arm to capture and deorbit the inactive ENVISAT satellite, which endangers other satellites in its orbit. The relative high angular velocity and high mass of the target satellite leads to a challenging control problem for the chaser satellite and its robot arm. To achieve accurate and robust performance for the ADR a combined controller is designed using a multi-stage and multi-objective design and optimization procedure. The combined controller is able to control all degrees of freedom of the chaser satellite and robot arm simultaneously. To verify this control approach, high fidelity models of the scenario were developed and used within an advanced GNC simulation tool. Important aspects such as detailed thruster models, flexibility of the targets solar panel and robot arm were considered in addition to fuel sloshing and other orbital disturbance forces. Simulation results show that the developed combined controller is able to achieve good precision and robustness for important phases of the ADR scenario.