Arm path planning for a space robot

A path planning method for the manipulator arm of a space robot is presented. The purpose of the path planning is to control the manipulated satellite attitude as well as the joint angles of the arm. The joint angles are expressed by two parameters, and a relation between the attitude change and the motion of the parameters is derived., Based on the relation, an algorithm for determining a joint angle path to cause the desired attitude change is proposed. A numerical study is executed using a space robot model with a manipulator arm having six degrees of freedom. The result shows that the algorithm is effective for obtaining the joint angle path of the space robot.