Arm path planning of a space robot with angular momentum

Abstract

Arm path planning of a space robot with angular momentum is considered in this paper. A space robot changes its attitude by the arm motion and angular momentum of the space robot has the possibility to reduce the attitude change. A path planning method of the arm where the final satellite attitude becomes the same as the initial one is proposed. The method derives an approximate path first based on the attitude change when the arm moves along an infinitely small closed curve and then modifies the path by the Newton method. The amplitude of the arm motion decreases with the magnitude of the angular momentum, which shows that the proposed method utilizes the angular momentum effectively.