Autonomous rendezvous/docking in space

Abstract

The proposed project involves design and development of a ground-based system for simulating spacecraft dynamics and autonomous docking maneuvres. The proposed design has a cable-driven parallel robot that acts as a versatile testbed. This system involves a rigid cubic frame with eight motorized actuators which allow precise control of a suspended object (the "end-effector") using tensioned cables. The proposed design is aimed to achieve six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) where three are for movement in space and the other three are for rotation providing full spatial manipulation which effectively simulates a microgravity environment. An overhead crane also helps with motor and cable setup, improving load distribution and flexibility. The proposed idea also involves a simulation framework to test autonomous space docking. This framework considers both how objects move in orbit and how they orient themselves. The proposed idea aims to implement image-based visual servoing (IBVS), which uses visual cues from simulated images to guide and navigate the docking process. The control methods will be evaluated under realistic disturbances, and numerical experiments to show that the proposed approach is optimal, successfully reaching the target rendezvous point even with noisy measurements and dynamic uncertainties. The proposed development process involves transitioning these control algorithms to hardware-in-the-loop testing using our custom-built cable-driven robot and validating them in a high-fidelity Unreal Engine environment. This proposed idea approach offers a powerful tool for aerospace robotics, control systems.