In-Orbit Servicing and Active Debris Removal require advanced robotic capabilities for capturing and detumbling uncooperative targets. This work presents a hierarchical control framework for autonomous robotic capture of tumbling objects in space. A simulation environment is developed, incorporating sloshing dynamics of the chaser, a rarely studied effect in space robotics. The proposed controller combines an inner Lyapunov-based robust control loop for multi-body dynamics with an outer loop addressing an extended inverse kinematics problem. Simulation results show improved robustness and adaptability compared to existing control schemes.
@article{arxiv.2509.22955,
title = {A Hierarchical Control Architecture for Space Robots in On-Orbit Servicing Operations},
author = {Pietro Bruschi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.22955},
year = {2025}
}