Robotic Simulation of Flexible-Body Spacecraft Dynamics.

摘要

A robotic testbed has been developed to conduct hardware-in-the-loop simulations of a robotic servicer interacting with a client satellite on-orbit. By creating an analytical model of a satellite with flexible appendages, it is possible to simulate the system response to external force and torque inputs and compare the predicted system motion to a robot mass simulator outfitted with physical appendages. This validation effort includes multiple test cases that encompass the types of interaction forces a satellite might experience during a nominal on-orbit servicing mission and aims to show the simulation's ability to capture the physical system response. After incorporating the flexible-body dynamics into the robotic mass simulator at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), a hardware-in-the-loop simulation can be used to characterize the potential impact of structural flexibility on an end-to-end satellite servicing mission.