Adaptive whole-arm grasping approach of tumbling space debris by two coordinated hyper-redundant manipulators

Abstract

Space debris generally has unknown motion information, which brings great challenge for space debris capture and removal. In this paper, we propose an adaptive whole-arm grasping approach of tumbling space debris by two coordinated hyper-redundant manipulators. Firstly, the dynamic model of the tumbling target is derived and its motion characteristics are analyzed. Secondly, a complementary grasping strategy is proposed for tumbling space debris capture, in which two coordinated hyper-redundant manipulators are utilized to wrap around the space debris together. The grasping strategy includes two steps (1) determining the twining curve for each hyper-redundant manipulator and (2) searching algorithm for feasible grasping configuration that could match with the twining curve. Specifically, the second step involves the capture occasion determination and the pre-planning technique. The main advantages of the proposed method lie in its grasping efficiency and adaptivity to grasped objects. Finally, two examples to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method are presented.