Energy efficient reactionless design of multi-arm space robot for a cooperative handshake maneuver

Abstract

Space robots play a significant role in on-orbit capture, space structure construction, and assembly tasks. Since the robotic arms are attached to a free-floating satellite, the motion of the manipulator in such tasks and the satellite are coupled. Multiple-arm space robots can perform complex cooperative tasks and are superior to single-arm space robots. Current work proposes a reactionless manipulation algorithm for a multi-robotic arm based on the iterative Newton–Euler method for space robots with many task and balance arms. The present work demonstrates two tasks and one balance arm to perform a reactionless handshake maneuver in space. This maneuver is presented in detail for a planar and spatial case. The planar case uses 3 DoF robotic arms, while the spatial case uses 6 DoF robotic arms. In addition, the balance arm has been designed considering the efficient usage of energy satisfying reactionless manipulation concept. The design procedure focuses on minimizing energy used during the motion of the balance arm for a known motion of task arms using a genetic algorithm. Moreover, computational experiments are conducted to validate the use of the genetic algorithm for optimization. The results of proposed reactionless manipulation algorithm have been validated with the results available in the literature for the spatial case that uses a different method. In the future, an energy-efficient balance arm will be designed to handle tumbling objects.