ON THE NATURE OF CONTROL ALGORITHMS FOR FREE-FLOATING SPACE MANIPULATORS

This paper strongly suggests that nearly any control algorithm that can be used for fixed-based manipulators also can be employed in the control of free-floating space manipulator systems, with the additional conditions of estimating or measuring a spacecraft's orientation and of avoiding dynamic singularities. This result is based on the structural similarities between the kinematic and dynamic equations of a free-floating space system and the same equations for the same manipulator but with a fixed base. Barycenters are used to formulate the kinematic and dynamic equations of free-floating space manipulators. A control algorithm for a space manipulator system is designed to demonstrate the value of the analysis. The results obtained should encourage the development of a wide variety of control algorithms for free-floating space manipulator systems.