A Real-Time Motion Control Tracking Mechanism for Satellite Tracking Antenna Using Serial Robot

The motorized antenna mechanism is the central part of healthy satellite communication using a real-time motion tracking system. Typically, parallel manipulators are employed in the space industry for tracking the satellites with the antenna mounted on the end-effector. However, the workspace limitations of the parallel manipulators are highly restricted in terms of the end-effector’s linear and angular motions compared with the serial manipulators. In order to take the privilege of a serial manipulator advantages, the antenna is mounted on the ABB irb6600 manipulator’s end-effector while only generating 2-degree-of-freedom (2-DoF) motions for simplification. Unfortunately, the current system cannot track the satellite motion accurately as it cannot generate the smooth motion while following a path, especially when the end-effector is in the vertical position. In this study, a real-time motion control tracking system using the 6-DoF motion of the ABB irb6600 robot is designed and developed using TCP/IP communication technique between MATLAB and IRC5 controller aiming to accurately track the satellite path with the ability to decrease the jerkiness of the motion. The proposed method has been tested in simulation environment using the small prototype of the ABB robot (irb120) while Simulink Desktop Real-Time and RoboStudio are used. The inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor is used to prove the tracking accuracy of the proposed method and elimination of the jerky motions using the proposed algorithm.