Modeling and simulation on impact motion of space robot for object capturing

For space robots, to perform tasks in space, impacts between them and other objects are inevitable. The impact dynamics is studied in the paper. Firstly, the kinematics model and the dynamics model are established for the space robot. Secondly, the impact dynamics model is presented based on the impulse principle. Then, the collision detection is achieved by the analytic geometry and the motion after impact is analyzed as well. The simulation platform is built by Visual C++ and OpenGL, which can show the real-time collision motion state. Finally, the two experiments are carried out for verifying the impact dynamics model and the algorithm of motion analysis presented in the paper. From the result of the experiments, the practicability and validity of the impact model for space robot capturing the free-fly target are verified.