Control Strategy of Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulator EPOS 2.0 for Autonomous Docking Verification

This paper briefly describes the hybrid simulator system called European Proximity Operation Simulator (EPOS 2.0) and the development of the hardware‐in‐the‐loop (HIL) docking simulation concept. A critical requirement for the docking simulation of this HIL simulator is that the 6‐DOF robots in the loop have to exactly mimic the dynamic response of the two satellites during a contact operation. The main challenges to meet this requirement are in the stiffness of the robots, which is unlike that of the satellites, as well as the time delay in the HIL simulator. The paper mainly presents the impedance parameter identification concept for matching the impedance between the satellites impact model and the EPOS robots. Finally it presents the preliminary results and future work. (© 2011 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)