Modeling and Simulation of Assembly in a Free-floating Work Environment by a Free-floating Robot

Freely moving systems in space conserve linear and angular momentum. As moving systems collide, the velocities get altered due to transfer of momentum. The development of strategies for assembly in a free-floating work environment requires a good understanding of primitives such as self motion of the robot, propulsion of the robot due to onboard thrusters, docking of the robot, retrieval of an object from a collection of objects, and release of an object in an object pool. The analytics of such assemblies involves not only kinematics and rigid body dynamics but also collision and impact dynamics of multibody systems. This paper presents analytical models of assembly, built from the models of primitives, and some possible strategies for overall assembly.