Abstract
This paper presents the experimental evaluation of contact characteristics of a space robot equipped with a compliant wrist. Introduction of a compliant wrist allows a space robot to ease contact control issues in microgravity environment, such as satellite capture and soft landing on asteroid surface, because a compliant wrist increases contact duration and reduces peak of contact force. The contact dynamics model between a compliant wrist and a floating object is constructed as oscillatory systems, and the model is simplified by assumption that dominant frequency of the system is given by a compliant wrist. Contact duration and coefficient of restitution are formulated based on the simplified contact dynamics model. Finally, experimental evaluation is conducted using an air-floating-based two dimensional microgravity emulator. The experimental results showed that the simplified model can be used to predict contact duration and resulting coefficient of restitution in a specific range.
