Point to Point Reactionless Path Planning of Dual Robotic Arms

Space robotics is gaining traction and has potential use in space structure construction, space debris removal, and satellite maintenance. The robotic arms can be used to perform servicing operations or to capture a satellite. However, due to the free-floating satellite, the motion of the manipulator and the satellite is coupled and affects each other. Therefore, reactionless path planning becomes a challenging task in the presence of coupled motion for the arms attached to the platform of the satellite. Current work proposes algorithms for point-to-point path planning of dual 3-DoF and 6-DoF robotic arms attached to the satellite such that the center of mass (CoM) of the satellite is inertially fixed. A general method for reactionless manipulation using iterative Newton-Euler formulation has been used. This reactionless algorithm for the 3 DoF case is further validated using the Recursive Dynamics Simulator (ReDySim). Simulation on planar 4 DoF robotic arm is also performed to validate the developed algorithm with literature. One of the important features is using the genetic algorithm to design the balance arm to minimize the energy of the reactionless manipulation task. In addition, a unique point-to-point (PTP) manipulation task was designed to minimize the reactions on the satellite using 3 phase method. The paper also describes simulation for a dual 6 DoF robotic arms. In this work, the task arm trajectory was planned to accomplish a pick and place operation, and the balance arm is moved to nullify the reactions. The simulation results proves the efficacy of the reactionless manipulation algorithm and justify the use of this method.