Abstract: This paper investigates the recursive implementation of adaptive control for flexiblejoint freefloating space manipulators (FFSM). Based on adaptive control for rigid-joint FFSM, joint-space adaptive controller for flexiblejoint FFSM is derived by adding relative damping term, and then the recursive joint-space adaptive control for flexiblejoint FFSM is developed. The recursive jointspace adaptive control consists of two parts, one for the recursive formulation of the manipulator control torques, the other for the recursive updating of the spacecraft reference velocity and acceleration. Simulation is presented to show that the recursive adaptive controller can achieve the joint-space trajectory tracking on a six-DOF FFSM.

Key words: recursive adaptive control, flexible joint, freefloating space manipulator