Trajectory planning of dual-arm space robots for target capturing and base manoeuvring

摘要

This paper presents a trajectory planning method for a dual-arm space robot that is free-floating and receives no actuation from the base spacecraft. The task is to capture a target by a mission arm and accomplish base manoeuvring with the coupling effects by a manoeuvring arm. Three manoeuvring cases for the base are discussed concerning attitude regulation, attitude tracking and position tracking. In all cases, an optimization method is applied to solve for the joint velocity of the arms, which ensures that the joint states of the mission arm obtain the desired states for capturing and control the motion of the base. Moreover, the collision avoidance of the manoeuvring arm with the base and mission arm is considered an inequality constraint. In particular, the joint velocity of the mission arm is represented by a new variable to remove the disturbance caused by the mission arm on the attitude of the base which makes it easier to complete the attitude manoeuvring case. Finally, numerical simulations are carried out by the planar and spatial dual-arm robots to validate the efficiency of the control strategy during both capturing and base manoeuvring.