Dynamics and Control of a Reconfigurable Multi-Arm Robot for In-Orbit Assembly

In this paper, a passivity-based controller is proposed for a reconfigurable multi-arm system, which is employed for in-orbit assembly. The reconfigurable system is composed of multiple anthropomorphic arms which can be connected to a torso or operate independently. The proposed control is applicable for all the morphologies of the multi-arm system while performing several operations required for the assembly task, such as walking on a telescope structure through dedicated mechanical interfaces. The constrained dynamics is exploited to derive a unified joint actuation control law for all the considered operations and morphologies. A Co-simulation framework was developed to simulate the operations for control prototyping, and simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed unified controller.