Coordinated trajectory planning of dual-arm space robot using constrained particle swarm optimization

Application of the multi-arm space robot will be more effective than single arm especially when the target is tumbling. This paper investigates the application of particle swarm optimization (PSO) strategy to coordinated trajectory planning of the dual-arm space robot in free-floating mode. In order to overcome the dynamics singularities issue, the direct kinematics equations in conjunction with constrained PSO are employed for coordinated trajectory planning of dual-arm space robot. The joint trajectories are parametrized with Bézier curve to simplify the calculation. Constrained PSO scheme with adaptive inertia weight is implemented to find the optimal solution of joint trajectories while specific objectives and imposed constraints are satisfied. The proposed method is not sensitive to the singularity issue due to the application of forward kinematic equations. Simulation results are presented for coordinated trajectory planning of two kinematically redundant manipulators mounted on a free-floating spacecraft and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.