Nonlinear optimal and near-optimal controls of a space robotic system via parallel computation

In this paper, nonlinear optimal control and suboptimal control of a space robotic system are considered. The robotic system consists of an n-DOF robotic manipulator mounted onto an attitude controlled base. To minimize control energy of thrust in maintaining the attitude of the base, nonlinear optimal control problem of the robotic arm is formulated. Optimal and suboptimal control laws are proposed. For real-time implementation of these control laws using a multi-microprocessor based computer, parallel processing algorithms are discussed. Copyright (C) 1998 IFAC.