Development of brachiating control system for reconfigurable brachiating space robot

This paper presents a summary of the designed brachiating control system for a reconfigurable brachiating space robot (RBR). RBR that has been studied at NASDA, Tokyo Institute Of Technology, KEIO University for the next generation space robot, following the robot arm on Engineering Test Satellite VII (ETS-VII) and the JEM remote manipulator system (JEMRMS) in Japan. RBR has distributed controllers and the capability of being attached to or detached from the hub port as well as another arm and/or a pivot placed on any point over the space systems, and thereby it becomes possible for RBR to have a variety of configurations. Thus, we used an autonomous distributed control method in order to designing a motion control system for brachiating on handrails on the International Space Station. As a result of using the control system, RBR acquired the capability of motion control utilizing the hardware to adapt for changing configurations according to the task requirement. The design of the brachiating control system and its effectiveness analysis by computer simulations are described.