Mid-air Motion Planning of Floating Robot Using Heat Flow Method

摘要

We address in this paper the problem of planning motion of free floating robot. Dueto the conservation of angular and linear momentum during the in-air motion, the problem istwo-fold: one needs to design, in addition to the in-air motion, the initial impulse that impartsthe robot with the appropriate momentum to perform a desired motion. We propose in this papera new method to address this problem. The method is a homotopy method which deforms anarbitrary path connecting the desired initial and final states to a feasible trajectory betweenthese states, that is a trajectory that meets the system's dynamics and constraints. From thistrajectory, the method extracts both the controls and initial momentum needed to perform themotion. We illustrate the method by designing somersault motions for a diver robot.