A High-Certainty Visual Servo Control Method for a Space Manipulator with Flexible Joints

This paper introduces a novel high-certainty visual servo algorithm for a space manipulator with flexible joints, which consists of a kinematic motion planner and a Lyapunov dynamics model reference adaptive controller. To enhance kinematic certainty, a three-stage motion planner is proposed in Cartesian space to control the intermediate states and minimize the relative position error between the manipulator and the target. Moreover, a planner in joint space based on the fast gradient descent algorithm is proposed to optimize the joint’s deviation from the centrality. To improve dynamic certainty, an adaptive control algorithm based on Lyapunov stability analysis is used to enhance the system’s anti-disturbance capability. As to the basic PBVS (position-based visual servo methods) algorithm, the proposed method aims to increase the certainty of the intermediate states to avoid collision. A physical experiment is designed to validate the effectiveness of the algorithm. The experiment shows that the visual servo motion state in Cartesian space is basically consistent with the planned three-stage motion state, the average joint deviation index from the centrality is less than 40%, and the motion trajectory consistency exceeds 90% under different inertial load disturbances. Overall, this method reduces the risk of collision by enhancing the certainty of the basic PBVS algorithm.