Abstract
The subject of this paper is a space robot that has a manipulator arm mounted on a satellite body. When the space robot works on a target, it needs to exert force to the target. In this paper, we first derive a force control law of the space robot in case where the space robot and the target are flying freely. Then we apply the force control law to a control scheme after the space robot captures the target. The purpose of the control scheme is to decrease the relative velocity of the target to the space robot without yielding excessive force. The control scheme consists of 2 steps: a step to obtain the desired force and torque exerted on the target from the manipulator hand and a step to obtain the manipulator joint torques to realize the desired force and torque by the force control law. The obtained control scheme is simple, and simulation results show that the control scheme is effective to decrease the relative velocity of the target.
