Active disturbance rejection controller for space teleoperation

As space teleoperation becomes a new hotspot in space exploration, interesting control challenges including large variant timedelay, model error and unpredicted disturbances are presented. Though good results have been received using linear error feedback controller such as PID algorithm, limited robustness and tracking performance are still big problems. Aiming at a stable, efficient and robust controller, this paper develops an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) method, which doesn't rely on the knowledge of a precise robot model, for a single degree-of-freedom (DOF) telerobot rotating joint with an approximate 6 seconds roundtrip timedelay. Some computer simulations have been done, and stable performance, better disturbance-rejection capability and robust ability of ADRC for space teleoperation than PID are verified by simulation results.