Autonomous Assembly Method of 3-Arm Robot to Fix the Multipin and Hole Load Plate on a Space Station

Abstract

Using space stations for a large number of observation, exploration, and research is a necessary way to fully develop space technology. It is a necessary means of space experiment to install the extravehicular experimental load by using the load plate. However, the extravehicular environment is full of danger, which poses a threat to the health and even safety of astronauts. Using robots to replace astronauts to complete this task can effectively reduce the threat to astronauts. Aiming at the problem that the configurations of existing space robots have difficulty in balancing the contradiction between complexity and dexterity, our previous work proposes a 12-DOF 3-arm robot and preliminarily explores the feasibility of its large-scale ability. This paper focus on the 8-DOF redundant dexterous manipulator composed of 2 of the robot arms. In view of the difficulties in solving the inverse kinematics of the redundant manipulator, the challenges of complex environmental lighting, and difficulties of matching multiple groups of holes and pins in the load plate assembly task, the research on the autonomous assembly of the load plate is carried out. The main work is as follows: (a) A variable D-H parameter inverse kinematics solution method is proposed, which lays a foundation for humanoid dexterous operation planning of the robot. (b) An autonomous operation method based on visual guidance and variable parameter admittance control is proposed. Finally, the safety and robustness of the robot in the autonomous assembly of the load plate with multipins and holes are successfully verified by experiments.