Distributed Delay Compensation for a Hybrid Simulation System of Space Manipulator Capture

The simulation of the target capture process of space manipulator is of great significance for the manipulator and task verification. By integrating the physical and numerical simulation, the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation is very suitable to simulate the complicated contact dynamics of the target capture process of the multi-body manipulator in 3D space. However, the time delays in the system loop lead to HIL simulation error and even system instability. In this study, a distributed delay compensation approach is proposed for the hybrid simulation system of space manipulator capture. The force delay, calculation delay, actuation delay and mechanism delay in the system loop are compensated in situ. Compared with lumped compensation, distributed compensation has stronger robustness to the signal noise and better adaptability to the varying contact natural frequency. Simulations and experiments show that the proposed compensation approach can guarantee the system stability and satisfactory simulation accuracy.