A space robot of the center-of-mass invariant structure

Abstract

We propose a free-flying space robot whose center-of-mass is fixed to the base body and invariant to changes of the configuration. The space robot with such a structure, named 'center-of-mass invariant structure,' has the following characteristics: (1) an experimental system on the ground is simply built, (2) the computational cost of the generalized Jacobian matrix is reduced, and (3) motions in 2D planes are holonomic. We developed a prototype of the space robot with the center-of-mass invariant structure. The result of a preliminary experiment is to be shown.