Contact dynamics emulation for hardware-in-loop simulation of robots interacting with environment

To verify all robotic tasks involving a space robot interacting with environment, such as the special purpose dexterous manipulator, one should appeal to a simulation technique because the space robot cannot operate in an 1-g environment. However, to simulate dynamical behavior of a robot interacting with environment possess many difficulties due to complexity of the physical phenomenon involved during the interaction. In this work we develop an hardware-in-loop simulation technique, where a simulation of the space robot dynamics is combined with emulation of the contact dynamics by using a rigid robot prototype performing the contact task. The rigid robot is not dynamically or kinematically equivalent to the space robot, but it is controlled so that its endpoint dynamics replicates that of the space robot. Experimental results given from implementation of a single axis arm are presented.