Multi-Agent Transportation of Free-Flyers in Microgravity Via Pushing Interaction Under Human-in-the-Loop Control

Abstract:We propose a safety-critical framework for the cooperative transportation of passive targets in microgravity, where a team of chaser robots acts through unilateral pushing contacts to track a human-provided desired twist while ensuring safe target motion. The pushing-only nature of the interaction introduces sparse, configuration-dependent actuation constraints requiring chasers to physically relocate on the target body when the desired pushing allocation changes. To address these challenges, we formulate a delay-aware feedback control architecture leveraging Control Lyapunov Function (CLF) and Control Barrier Function (CBF) constraints within a mixed-integer thrust allocation program to enforce stability and safety of the target, respectively. The proposed framework enables reference tracking while guaranteeing obstacle avoidance with a circular obstacle despite intermittent control authority, providing a foundation for human-supervised cooperative transportation of free-flyers in space environments. The proposed framework is validated through Gazebo simulations.

Robotics (cs.RO); Systems and Control (eess.SY)

arXiv:2609.24376 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2609.24376v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.24376 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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