A Practical Manipulator System

This paper describes the development of a practical manipulator system. The manipulator requirements dictated by space exploration, the functional elements which meet those require­ ments, and the problems encountered in imple­ menting those requirements are discussed. The paper focuses primarily on the implemen­ tation of the functional elements and the real world problems encountered by the manipulator system, as opposed to the specific algorithms and equa­ tions, since we feel that these two factors are under emphasized in the literature. Specific topics discussed include user inter­ faces, trajectory planning, safety and obstacle avoidance, and link motion control. Implementa­ tion emphasis has been placed on flexibility, mini­ mizing complexity, and increasing reliability.