Evaluation of inertial devices for the control of large, flexible, space-based telerobotic arms

Batch simulation studies which show that torque-wheels can reduce the overshoot in abrupt stop commands by 82 percent for a two-link arm are presented. For man-in-the-loop evaluation, a real-time simulator has been developed that samples a hand-controller, solves the nonlinear equations of motion, and graphically displays the resulting motion on a computer workstation. It is shown that, for a single-link arm, a reaction-mass/torque-wheel combination at the payload end can yield a settling time of 3 s for disturbances in the first flexible mode as opposed to 10 s utilizing only a hub motor.