Nonlinear control of underactuated multi-body space vehicles

This paper provides an overview of dynamics and control issues for a class of multi-body space vehicles, that is space vehicles consisting of an interconnection of a rigid base body and a finite number of connected bodies that define the shape of the vehicle. A summary of multi-body space vehicle dynamics is provided that describes the coupling between the dynamics of the base body and the shape dynamics. Several categories of underactuated multi-body space vehicle models are introduced and it is shown that they are in a standard normal form for underactuated mechanical control systems. A number of control problems are posed and references to available literature are given. The development is motivated by rest-to-rest maneuvering problems for underactuated multi-body space vehicles. Copyright (C) 2000 IFAC.