Lagrangian Jacobian motion planning with application to a free-floating space manipulator

This paper presents an application of the Lagrangian Jacobian motion planning algorithm to non-holonomic robotic systems subordinated to affine Pfaffian constraints. A specific form of the algorithm, minimizing the energy of the trajectory variations, is applied to free-floating space manipulators equipped with 3 or 4 DOF on-board manipulator, and compared with the Jacobian pseudoinverse algorithm. To make the motion planning problem tractable the dynamics model of the space manipulator is transformed by feedback to a pre-normal form. Results of computer simulations show potential advantages of this Lagrangian Jacobian motion planning for applications in Space robotics.