COORDINATED CONTROL OF SPACECRAFT ATTITUDE AND SPACE MANIPULATORS

When a robot arm is mounted on a satellite to perform some tasks. the satellite's attitude must be stabilized to retain the communication li nk and to generate electrical power from solar panels. It is not reali stic to control the total system as one dynamic system: since the numb er of degrees of freedom becomes too large to be handled by state-of-t he-art satellite-mounted computers. This paper proposes a coordinated control between the satellite's attitude control system and the robot arm control system. The robot arm control system estimates the angular momentum of the planned robot arm's motion. The satellite's attitude control sz stem will compensate for the reaction by using feed-foward control The robot arm controller also manages the motion plan of the r obot arm in order not to disturb the satellite's attitude stability.