Adaptive postcapture backstepping control for tumbling tethered space robot-target combination

A robust adaptive backstepping controller is proposed to achieve stabilization of a tumbling tethered space robot-target combination. The numerical simulations show that the combination can be stabilized by the proposed controller (CRABC). Compared with backstepping control and robust adaptive backstepping control, CRABC has the smallest saturation of the thrusters due to the utilization of the auxiliary design system and the optimal controller. One can observe that the attitude of the combination can be stabilized by BC, RABC, and CRABC. Compared with the other two controllers, with CRABC, the system states converge faster. Moreover, among these three methods, CRABC achieves the best transient performance with the smallest amplitudes and oscillations during the combination attitude stabilization.