Simulation of a flexible arm robot for space station applications

Abstract

A Flexible Arm Robot (FAR), which could be attached to the Space Station, could be used for reaching many locations in the vicinity of the Space Station without the need for astronauts in space suits to perform extravehicu lar activity. FAR is a tube-shaped robot consisting of many stacked segments which are individually controllable. Each segment has six degrees of freedom. Because this robot has many degrees of freedom, new algorithms were needed to control it. A graphical model and a mathe matical model (direct and inverse kinematics) of FAR have been developed. Based on these two models, a software package for simulating this Flexible Arm Robot on a computer system has been made. FAR and the two models are briefly described in this paper.