Implementation and Kinematic Control of a Hyper-redundant Mobile Manipulator System

Redundant or hyper-redundant mobile manipulator can give lots of assistance to astronauts in space station. The design and implementation of a hyper redundant mobile manipulator system are described, which is composed of an 8 DOF module robot and a 1 DOF motorized rail. Inverse kinematic resolution of the system is discussed and one simplified control method based on joint limit avoidance and configuration optimization is proposed. Simulation and experimental results are presented.