Interaction Torque Control by Impedance Control of Space Robots

Abstract

This paper presents a control scheme for interaction torque control through impedance control at the interface of the end-effector and the environment. The impedance control is achieved by introduction of passive degrees of freedom (DOF) in the controller of the robotic system. Due to the interaction between the robot tip and the environment, the interaction torques act on the tip which gets transmitted through links to the base of the vehicle and the orientation of the vehicle changes. The orientation is restored back to the initial value using a reaction wheel as an attitude controller. The behavior of the space robot with torque and attitude controller is discussed.