Maneuvering and Vibrations Control of a Free-Floating Space Robot with Flexible Arms

A free-floating space robot with four linkages, two flexible arms and a rigid end-effector that are mounted on a rigid spacecraft; is studied in this paper. The governing equations are derived using Kane’s method. The powerful tools of Kane’s approach in incorporating motion constraints have been applied in the dynamic model. By including the motion constraints in the kinematic and dynamic equations, a two way coupling between the spacecraft motion and manipulator motion is achieved. The assumed mode method is employed to express elastic displacements, except that the associated admissible functions are supplanted by quasicomparison functions. By a perturbation approach, the resulting nonlinear problem is separated into two sets of equations: one for rigid-body maneuvering of the robot and the other for elastic vibrations suppression and rigid-body perturbation control. The kinematic redundancy of the manipulator system is removed by exploiting the conservation of angular momentum law that makes the rigid manipulator system nonholonimic. Nonholonomic constraints, resulted from the nonintegrability of angular momentum, in association with equations obtained from conservation of linear momentum and direct differential kinematics generate a set of ordinary differential equations that govern the motion tracking of the robot. The digitalized linear quadratic regulator (LQR) with prescribed degree of stability is used as the feedback control scheme to suppress vibrations. A numerical example is presented to show the numerical preferences of using Kane’s method in deriving the equations of motion and also the efficacy of the control scheme. Acquiring a zero magnitude for spacecraft attitude control moment approves the free-floating behavior of the space robot in which considerable amount of energy is saved.