Study of path planning of free-floating space robot in cartesin space

Path planning of free-floating space robot in Cartesian space is studied in the paper. Firstly the joint functions are parameterized by polynomials. Then the system of nonlinear equations about the parameters is established by integrating the differential kinematics equations. The problem of the path planning reduces to the resolution of the system of nonlinear equations, which can be solved by iterative Newtonian method. Since direct kinematics equations are used to determine the path of the manipulator joints, the problems with respect to dynamic singularities are avoided. After normalization of the joint functions, the boundary of the parameters to be defined is determined beforehand, and the general criterion to assign the initial guess of the unknown parameters is supplied. The criterion is independent on the planning conditions such as the time tf. Finally, a general method to solve the problem of the path planning is proposed, which takes the constraints on joint velocity and acceleration into account. Modification of tf may not result in the recalculation of the parameters. The numerical simulation shows the validity of the method proposed in the paper.