The recent developments in the space technology demand various services to the exhausted or damaged satellites such as refueling and repairing in order to extend their life spans. In this paper, an automated object capturing with a two-arm flexible manipulator is addressed, which is a basic technology for such services. This object capturing includes the symmetric cooperative control, the visual servoing, the resolution of the inverse kinematics problem and the optimization of the configuration of a two-arm redundant flexible manipulator. There have been no researches on such a practical application with the flexible manipulators so far. The effectiveness of this capturing sequence is validated with the experiment.

This paper discusses cooperative control of a two-arm spatial flexible manipulator with redundancy. Two different approaches are discussed to solve the kinematics of this manipulator. Moreover, several performance criteria are also discussed for this system in order to obtain an optimal kinematics solution. Some of the criteria discussed are peculiar to the cooperation of the two-arm spatial flexible manipulators, and have not been described before. Finally, the criteria and kinematics solutions are evaluated with experimental implementations.

This paper discusses an object recovery with flexible manipulators. To realize a stable capture with no slips at the end-effectors on the object surface, it is necessary to reduce the rise time of the internal forces. The relationship between the approach velocity and the internal forces being developed in the object during the capturing task is analyzed. Moreover, an approach to switch between the control modes is also proposed considering the resultant mechanical compliance at the tips of the arms, so that the internal forces rise rapidly. Finally, the experimental implementations illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.

This paper discusses a way of capturing a spinning object using two flexible manipulators. We propose a capturing procedure using hybrid position/force control and vibration suppression control. The procedure is established so that the manipulators capture the object automatically measuring position and rotational velocity of the object. The motion of the two hands of the manipulators are synchronized with the rotation of the object. The hands make contact with the spinning object safely, considering link flexibility, and then brake the spin smoothly. The effectiveness of our method is shown in experiments using two 3D manipulators, each of which has two flexible links and seven joints.