ARM PATH PLANNING OF A SPACE ROBOT WITH ANGULAR-MOMENTUM

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 a nd angular momentum of the space robot has the possibility to reduce t he attitude change. A path planning method of the arm where the final satellite attitude becomes the same as the initial one is proposed. Th e method derives an approximate path first based on the attitude chang e when the arm moves along an infinitely small closed curve and then m odifies the path by the Newton method. The amplitude of the arm motion decreases with the magnitude of the angular momentum, which shows tha t the proposed method utilizes the angular momentum effectively.