Failure treatment strategy and fault-tolerant path planning of a space manipulator with free-swinging joint failure

Aiming at a space manipulator with free-swinging joint failure, a failure treatment strategy and fault-tolerant path planning method is proposed in this paper. This method can realize failure treatment of a space manipulator with free-swinging joint failure through determination of the optimal locked joint angle and dynamics model reconfiguration. Fault-tolerant path planning is realized by the establishment of the degraded workspace with integrated kinematics performance (DWWIKP) and an improved A-Star (A1) algorithm. This paper has the following contributions. The determination of the optimal locked joint angle can ensure that the manipulator is able to continue follow-up tasks while maximizing the workspace of the manipulator after locking the fault joint. Underactuated control of a high degree-of-freedom (DOF) manipulator can be effectively solved through dynamics model reconfiguration. The analysis process of the dynamics coupling relationship can be applied to cases where the active joint and the passive joint are parallel or perpendicular to each other. The establishment of the DWWIKP can demonstrate the kinematics performance of the manipulator in both joint space and operation space comprehensively. The improved A1 algorithm based on the integrated kinematics performance index (IKPI) can search a fault-tolerant task trajectory that satisfies the requirements of reachability and the overall kinematics performance simultaneously. The method proposed in this paper is verified by a 7-DOF manipulator, and it is available to any DOF manipulator with free-swinging joint failure.