Ptlm. Vanwoerkom et al., DEVELOPING ALGORITHMS FOR EFFICIENT SIMULATION OF FLEXIBLE SPACE MANIPULATOR OPERATIONS, Acta astronautica, 36(6), 1995, pp. 297-312
A brief description is given of the European Robot Arm (ERA), and its
intended application to assembly, maintenance and servicing of the Rus
sian segment of the International Space Station Alpha. The need for ma
nipulator simulation is recalled, and ERA simulator development is out
lined. System characteristics that must be modelled for incorporation
in the dynamics kernel for the simulator are mentioned. A brief review
is presented of efficient Order-N-3 and Order-N algorithms for the si
mulation of manipulator dynamics. Parenthetically the existence of a l
ink between Kane's method, the natural orthogonal complement method, a
nd Jourdain's principle is indicated. An algorithm of the Order-N type
has then been developed and implemented in the ERA simulation facilit
y. Some numerical results are presented, displaying accuracy as well a
s computational efficiency.