Development of an Integrated Design and Simulation Environment for Concurrent Base-Arm Motion Control of Space Manipulators

To develop and verify the mot ion control of space manipulators experimentally, a manipulator system with a freely-moving base is needed. In addition, an integrated design and simulation environment is required for the system to study the operation under various conditions and in different scenarios before implementing the control scheme on the experimental hardware setup. Lastly, certain experiments need to be designed to validate and compare the performance of various control schemes quantitatively. This paper discusses the development of a new free-base manipulator system with its integrated design and simulation environment, as well as the design of a set of experiments that can statistically evaluate the performance of concurrent base-arm motion control schemes.