Design of a virtual foundation for impedance control in a dual arm cooperative space robot

This work presents the design of virtual foundation through which impedance control is achieved in a dual arm space robot for cooperative manipulation of arms. A docking operation by the two arms of the space robot has been carried out. During this docking operation, the space robot has a mechanical interaction with the compliant objects which encounter force and motion constraints. The docking operation requires that the object must be gripped and follows a specific path to dock the selected object. By use of the virtual foundation, impedance control is achieved to fulfill both objectives, i.e. force control during gripping and trajectory control during docking. The space robot base compensation is designed to achieve the desired trajectory to control the interaction forces. The methodology has been validated with simulated results.