Coordinated control of dual-arm robot on space structure for capturing space targets

This paper presents a coordinated control scheme for two capture tasks via a dual-arm space robot with its base on a flexible space structure. The robot system consists of a base, a mission arm for capture, and a balance arm for removing disturbance forces to the base. To counteract the impact of structural vibration, a two-stage strategy containing a vibration control stage and a target capture stage is proposed. In the first stage, the robot and structure are treated as a mass-spring system in which the coupling effect between the robot and the flexible structure is exploited to suppress structural vibration. Notably, the collision avoidance between two arms is achieved by a velocity inequality constraint, wherein the reactionless motion is utilized. In the second stage, a reactionless trajectory is planned for the mission arm to reach the target location and attitude, as the balance arm remove the coupling disturbance to the base. Afterwards, the balance arm becomes the new mission arm for capture and the other arm is defined as the new balance arm. Finally, numerical simulations are given to validate the efficiency of the proposed coordinated control strategy.