The application of space robotic manipulators and heightened autonomy for In-Orbit Servicing (IOS) represents a paramount pursuit for leading space agencies, given the substantial threat posed by space debris to operational satellites and forthcoming space endeavors. This work presents a guidance algorithm based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) to solve for space manipulator path planning during the motion-synchronization phase with the mission target. The goal is the trajectory generation and control of a spacecraft equipped with a 7-Degrees of Freedom (7-DoF) robotic manipulator, such that its end effector remains stationary with respect to the target point of capture. The Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) DRL algorithm is used to optimize the manipulator’s guidance law, and the autonomous agent generates the desired joint rates of the robotic arm, which are then integrated and passed to a model-based feedback linearization controller. The agent is first trained to optimize its guidance policy and then tested extensively to validate the results against a simulated environment representing the motion synchronization scenario of an IOS mission.

The application of space robotic manipulators and heightened autonomy for ios represents a paramount pursuit for leading space agencies, given the substantial threat posed by space debris to operational satellites and forthcoming space endeavors. This work presents a guidance algorithm based on drl to solve for the space manipulator path-planning during the motion synchronization phase with the mission target. The goal is the trajectory generation and control of a spacecraft equipped with a 7-dof robotic manipulator, such that its end effector remains stationary with respect to the target point of capture. The ppo drl algorithm is used to optimize the manipulator’s guidance law, and the autonomous agent generates the desired joints rates of the robotic arm, which are then integrated and passed to a model-based feedback linearization controller. The agent is first trained to optimize its guidance policy and then tested extensively to validate the results against a simulated environment representing the motion synchronization scenario of an ios mission.

Future in-orbit servicing missions, such as spacecraft capture, repair, and assembly, demand robotic systems capable of autonomously computing dynamically feasible, constrained trajectories in real time. Sequential Convex Programming (SCP) has emerged as an effective method for online trajectory optimization in these resource-constrained settings, addressing nonconvex problems through iterative refinement while maintaining the formal guarantees essential for safety-critical applications. While emerging machine learning (ML) methods offer potential enhancements to trajectory generation, they often lack these rigorous guarantees. To address this, we propose a hybrid trajectory optimization framework for robotic servicers, using autoregressive trajectory-generator networks to produce high-quality initial guesses and warm-start an SCP module, enabling the system to produce optimal trajectories quickly and reliably. A key advantage of this approach is the elimination of inverse-kinematics optimization for redundant manipulators during both guess generation and subsequent refinement. By conditioning on exogenous inputs shared with the SCP solver, the networks are inherently task- and obstacle-aware, yielding a tightly integrated architecture that minimizes on-board computational requirements. Results demonstrate that this network-based warm-starting strategy substantially accelerates trajectory generation, reducing both SCP computational time and iterations, while preserving the theoretical guarantees of convex optimization.