Agent-Based Design of Fault Tolerant Manipulators for Satellite Docking
Abstract
A rapidly deployable fault tolerant manipulator system
consists of modular hardware and support software that
allow the user to quickly configure and deploy a fault tolerant
manipulator that is custom-tailored for a given task.
The main focus of this paper is on the Task Based Design
component of such a system; that is, the determination of
the optimal manipulator configuration, its base position,
and the corresponding joint space trajectory for a given
task. We introduce a novel agent-based solution approach
to task based design and illustrate it with a fault tolerant
manipulator design for a satellite docking operation
aboard the space shuttle.