Approach trajectory planning of space robot for impact minimization

On-orbital services of space robot are playing more and more important roles in the space operation. Nearly all space operation can not possibly avoid to contact the target. Hence, the impact will occur during contact and capturing operation. Therefore, we try to study the contact and impact dynamics of space operation firstly, and then, we propose a novel approach to search the optimal approach trajectory of space robot in order to minimize or avoid the impact. An illustrative example has verified that the proposed method has satisfactory performance and real significance for reducing the impact.