Adaptive Sliding Mode Disturbance Observer-Based Composite Control With Prescribed Performance of Space Manipulators for Target Capturing

The requirements for the control performances of space manipulators, especially for the stability and accuracy of the attitude control systems of the base spacecrafts, are ever increasing during the space target capturing tasks. However, the system uncertainties caused by parameter variations will degrade the system performances severely. This paper investigates the precise and fast trajectory tracking control problem for the free-flying space manipulator, after capturing a space target with uncertain mass. To compensate the system uncertainty with complex and uncertain dynamics, a novel adaptive sliding mode disturbance observer (ASMDO) is proposed. Then, a composite controller with prescribed transient and steady-state performances is developed. It is proved that the estimation error of ASMDO can be stabilized in finite-time, though the bound of the derivative of system uncertainty is unknown. Meanwhile, the trajectory tracking error can also be stabilized in finite-time and has preassigned maximum overshoot and steady-state error. Finally, numerical simulations and experimental studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed methods.