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Avoidance of multiple moving obstacles during active debris removal using a redundant space manipulator

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  • Robot and Applications
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Abstract

During the operation of space manipulators for debris removal, the obstacles moving in the workspace must be avoided. We propose a unified modelling framework for multiple moving obstacles and a collision-free trajectory planning method for a redundant space manipulator. The complete properties of an obstacle, including its shape, dimension, pose (position and orientation), and velocity (linear and angular), are defined in the model. The obstacle surface is represented by a super quadratic function whose parameters are adjusted to describe different shapes and dimensions. Pseudo-distance is defined to evaluate the proximity extent between the manipulator and an obstacle. Considering multiple different obstacles, we present an approach to normalize the pseudo-distances. The self-motion of the redundant manipulator was used to optimize the normalized pseudo-distance by adaptive redundancy resolution. By ensuring that the pseudo-distance was always larger than the safety threshold value, collisions with the obstacles were avoided. The proposed method solved the problem for which the Euclidean distance was difficult, or even impossible, to calculate for 3-D cases. When handling multiple different obstacles, the proposed method was much easier and had higher computational efficiency than previous methods. The proposed method was verified by the simulation of typical missions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Zonggao Mu & Wenfu Xu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Zonggao Mu & Wenfu Xu

  3. Department of Automation, School of Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Bin Liang

Authors
  1. Zonggao Mu
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  2. Wenfu Xu
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  3. Bin Liang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wenfu Xu.

Additional information

Recommended by Associate Editor Juhoon Back under the direction of Editor Myo Taeg Lim. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61573116, U1613227), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China51521003), and the Basic Research Program of Shenzhen (JCYJ20160427183553203; JCYJ20150529141408781).

Zonggao Mu received the B.E. degree in Mechatronics engineering, from Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, Shandong, China in 2011, and the M.E. degree in Mechatronics engineering, from Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, China in 2013. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include space robotics, redundant manipulator.

Wenfu Xu received the B.E. degree in 2001, and the M.E. degree in 2003, both in control engineering, from Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China, and the Ph.D. degrees in the control science and engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2007. He was a research associate (as a visiting scholar, from Feb. 22, 2013 to Feb.21, 2014) with the Dept. Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, China. His research interests include space robotics, multi-body system dynamic, redundant manipulator.

Bin Liang received the B.S. and the M.S. degrees in control engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi-An, China, in 1991 and 1994 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in precision instrument and mechanology from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1994. He is currently a professor with the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research interests include space robotics, manipulators and intelligent control.

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Mu, Z., Xu, W. & Liang, B. Avoidance of multiple moving obstacles during active debris removal using a redundant space manipulator. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 15, 815–826 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-015-0455-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-015-0455-7

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