Multiobjective preimpact trajectory planning of space manipulator for self-assembling a heavy payload

Abstract

To assemble a heavy payload to the spacecraft (free-floating base), the present study proposes a scheme of multiobjective trajectory planning for preimpact motion of redundant space manipulator (mounted on the base). Force impulse for self-assembly is derived as the function of joint angles/velocities, base pose, and impact direction. The trajectory planning problem is formulated as multiobjective optimization to minimize force impulse, base attitude disturbance, and energy consumption in the load-carrying process. A two-stage trajectory planning algorithm is proposed. To be specific, at the first stage, multiple desired configurations at the contact point are generated by position-level inverse kinematics with Newton–Raphson iterative method. At the second stage, joint trajectories satisfying joint angle limits and desired motion of the payload are parameterized by coefficients of sinusoidal polynomial functions. Multiobjective particle swarm optimization algorithm is adopted to solve the problem of multiobjective trajectory planning, and screening process is conducted to reserve nondominated solutions in limits of joint torques. The algorithm is implemented to a seven degrees of freedom space manipulator, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation results.