Orientation Control of 3D Free-Flying Robots

—1st Report: Controllability of the Nonholonomic Systems with the Minimal DOF and its Application to Reorientation Planning—

Abstract

This paper discusses the controllability and the reorientation planning of 3D free-flying Linkage robots. By exepmlifying various types of the robot, we showed that the minimal degree of freedom could be two so that the base orientation can be controlled as well as the arm configuration of the robot. Then we proposed a new reorientation planning method. This method requires only two joints of moving, and is derived based on the piece together of three closed paths in planar configuration space. Its efficacies are showed by a couple of simulation results, such as fast convergence of computation, movement efficiency and availability to any type of robots, compared to other proposed methods.