Application of Force Control to the Robot of the Engineering Test Satellite VII.

Abstract

The ETS-VII is the first unmanned satellite with robot arm in the world. Three types of force/torque control functions based on active compliance control were applied to the robot for on-board local compensation of tele-operation and autonomous dexterous task operations. Various robot experiments for on-board servicing technology were conducted successfully with using the force/torque control functions. This paper describes the force control methods, results of flight experiments using the functions and their evaluation.