Determination of workspace and required initial position of free-flying space manipulator at target capture

Consideration was given to the issues of computer-aided construction of the workspace of the free-flying space handling robot controlled in the class of feedback systems. In particular, a case was discussed where the information about the direction and distance to the target is acquired with the use of a camcorder with built-in range finder mounted on a gimbal attached to the robot body. The analytical relations obtained enable one to solve the problems of injecting the space robot into the zone of target location and maintaining the desired orientation of the body relative to the direction to the target. The proposed approach to the problem of generation of the workspace was implemented as a computer algorithm in the Matlab-Simulink environment. Operability of the algorithm was exemplified an arbitrary initial configuration of the robot.