Reaction torque control of redundant free-floating space robot

This paper presents the reaction torque based satellite base reactionless control or base disturbance minimization of a redundant free-floating space robot. This subject is of vital importance in the study of the free-floating space robot because the base disturbance minimization will result in less energy consumption and prolonged control application. The analytical formulation of the reaction torque is derived in this article, and the reaction torque control can achieve reactionless control and satellite base disturbance minimization. Furthermore, we derive the reaction torque based control of the space robot for base disturbance minimization from both the non-strict task priority and strict task priority control strategy. The dynamics singularity in the proposed algorithm is avoided in this paper. Besides, a real time simulation system of the space robot under Linux/real time application interface (RTAI) is developed to verify and test the feasibility and reliability of the method. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of online reaction torque control of the redundant free-floating space robot.