Postgraduate research opportunities Robust & intelligent GNC techniques for autonomous free-flying space manipulators operations

Satellites provide crucial services, e.g. navigation, timing and communication, to people worldwide. Interruption of those services may jeopardize their vital contribution to the economic and social development on Earth.

With the expansion of the in-orbit objects population, the risk of potential service interruption increases due to the increasing potential collisions between different objects and also the limited capability of replacing or reconfiguring existing satellites after a failure. As the number of in-orbit objects increases, this approach tends to be unfeasible or inefficient, two possible actions can be taken:

• removal of failure objects (to reduce the population size)
• extension of the operational life of active ones (in orbit servicing)

Both actions will require the use of proper capturing devices, among which the use of a free-flying space manipulator (e.g. a space robotic arm) is being evaluated and proposed. The use of a space manipulator mounted on a satellite platform will pose relevant challenges to the guidance, navigation and control (GNC) of the platform, especially when the target object is uncooperative or unknown that brings about large uncertainties.

Based on the above considerations, the objectives of this project are two main aspects. Firstly, the aim is to develop general intelligent control algorithms to operate the space manipulator to achieve the desired movement considering the large uncertainties in the dynamical environment.

Secondly, it is to generate a robustness and intelligent GNC loop by integrating the outputs of the navigation and guidance blocks (developed by the collaborator Polytechnic di Milano) to the developed control block, and to perform onboard test of this integrated GNC. These research activities could also benefit from applying the artificial intelligence algorithms. The validity of the methods shall be general enough to be applied to any kind of target objects, exploiting the capabilities of a free-flying space manipulator.