Control Experiments of Flexible Manipulator Mounted on a Free-Flying Space Robot.

Abstract

This paper is concerned with some control experiments of a flexible manipulator mounted on a free-flying space robot by using a hardware experimental system. By means of a concept called virtual rigid manipulator, the manipulation variable feedback controls can be realized, which satisfy the collocation condition of sensors and actuators. To control the position and orientaion of the hand to a specified target, three control schemes for the flexible manipulators are examined, i. e., extended local PD-control, pseudo resolved motion rate control , and pseudo resolved acceleration control. The effectiveness of the proposed control schemes is successfully demonstrated through hardware experiments, where each joint of manipulator has a torque servo actuator for a fine torque control.