A practical and effective method for identifying the complete inertia parameters of space robots

This paper propose a practical and effective method for identifying the complete inertia parameters of a space robotic system. The key is the following steps: equivalent single-body identification, and equivalent two-body identification. For the former, all joints are locked into a normal configuration, and the thrusters are used for orbital maneuvering. The object function is defined from the view of acceleration and velocity. For the latter, only one joint is unlocked and driven to move along the exciting trajectory under the free-floating mode. The linear and angular momentum equations are used to define the object function. Hence, the parameter identification problem is transformed into a non-linear optimization problem, and the PSO algorithm is used to determine the optimal parameters. By sequentially unlocking the 1st to nth joint, the mass properties of body 0 to n are completely identified. The proposed method is general and can be easily extended for many cases.