Compliance- and Reliability-Based Bidesign for Space Manipulator Controller With Correlated Uncertainties and Actuator Degradation

Space manipulators play a pivotal role in on-orbit missions, yet their reliability is often compromised by complex environmental uncertainties and structural degradation. Existing probabilistic methods struggle with limited sample data in aerospace engineering, while traditional robust control often overlooks the time-variant nature of degradation. To address these gaps, this study proposes a Compliance- and Reliability-based Bi-design framework. Unlike previous works, this method synchronously integrates correlated convex-set uncertainties with a physics-based time dependent actuator degradation model. Specifically, the actuator degradation is explicitly modeled within the state-space equation and extended into the uncertain compliance control design using non-probabilistic convex-set theory. This allows for the accurate estimation of compliance force fluctuations and the assessment of time dependent reliability. The bi-design is realized through a reliability constrained optimization that balances control precision and system safety. Numerical examples based on an actual engineering scenario demonstrate that the proposed method significantly enhances both the precision and efficiency of the space manipulator controller compared to conventional approaches.