Flying Trapeze Act Motion Planning Algorithm for Two-Link Free-Flying Acrobatic Robot

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel motion planning algorithm for a two-link free-flying acrobatic robot, enabling it to accurately land on a trapeze after airborne motion through constrained optimization and posture correction.

Contribution

It introduces a combined trajectory planning, stabilization, and correction scheme specifically designed for two-link free-flying robots in acrobatic tasks.

Findings

Successful simulation validation under realistic conditions

Effective trajectory correction for non-controlled center-of-mass position

Stable landing on target trapeze demonstrated in simulation

Abstract

A flying trapeze act can be a challenging task for a robotics system since some act requires the performer to catch another trapeze or catcher at the end after being airborne. The objective of this paper is to design and validate a motion planning algorithm for a two-link free-flying acrobatic robot that can accurately land on another trapeze after free-flying in the air. First, the proposed algorithm plan the robot trajectory with the non-linear constrained optimization method. Then, a feedback controller is implemented to stabilize the posture. However, since the spatial position of the center-of-mass of the robot cannot be controlled, this paper proposes a trajectory correction scheme that manipulates the robot's posture such that the robot is still able to land on the target. Lastly, the whole algorithm is validated in the simulation that mimics real-world circumstances.