Positioning control of a flexible manipulator of a space robot based on Artificial Potential Method

Abstract

This paper presents an extension of our previous analyses on the soft docking of adaptive space structures based on the Artificial Potential Method. In our previous studies, improving the artificial potential and the damping control input of the Artificial Potential Method, we proposed control laws for the point-topoint movement along an assigned path and a desired motion schedule of the end-effector of both a space robot and a variable geometry truss structure consisting rigid links. Here, we will further improve the Artificial Potential Method to propose a positioning control by taking into account the effect of flexible links of the space robot. Numerical simulation has shown that the proposed method is very effective in controlling the end-effector to dock a target in a soft and smooth way along an assigned straight path with no precontact.