Abstract: Aiming at the problem of space noncooperative target capture, a method was proposed for the optimal cagingbased capture configuration design of multifinger for flat noncooperative objects. The core of the method is: selecting the lead finger of the capture mechanism and controlling it to track the caging point; calculating the feasible configuration of the follow fingers according to the geometric relationship of the capture mechanism; utilizing the cagingbased capture constraints, as well as collision detection constraints, and selecting the effective cagingbased capture configuration. Compared with the existing methods, the method adopts the simple mode of leaderfollowers, which can greatly reduce the calculation of the capture configuration optimization, and is suitable for realtime onorbit capture of space noncooperative targets. Further, the concept of safe capture margin is introduced to quantify the margin between the capture mechanism and the space noncooperative target. Considering the collision avoidance between the noncooperative target and the capture mechanism before the formation of the capture configuration, the configuration with maximum safe capture margin is chosen as the optimal. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, it is applied to the quadrilateral and regular pentagon moving target capture problems respectively. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Key words: space noncooperative target, cagingbased capture, leaderfollower grasping mode, safe capture margin, optimal capture configuration