Path planning for minimizing base reaction of space robot and its ground experimental study

In free-flying space robotic system, the thruster jets will compensate the disturbances induced by manipulator to keep the attitude of the robot base invariable. For saving the expensive fuel that thruster jets cost, point-to-point path planning method in joint space for minimizing base reaction is proposed in this paper. The sinusoidal and polynomial functions are used here to parameterize the joint motion. This parameterization method can satisfy the kinematical constraints. The optimal object of base reaction is computed by inverse dynamics. In order to limit the joint velocity, an objective function including the constraint of joint velocity is defined. Genetic algorithm is introduced to solve the optimized problem, and the parameters for the minimum objective function value are found. The path planned is very smooth, and it can be applied in practical. According to the experiment on the zero gravity system, the effectiveness of the algorithm is proved.