Abstract: Aiming at the mission requirement of the on orbit manipulation robots in different phases, i.e., walking through and attaching to the space truss in walking phase and manipulation phase, a three dimensional global path planning strategy based on the raster model and an ant colony optimization via neighborhood continuation search is proposed. In the proposed path planning strategy, a three dimensional raster model of the international space station is built and a preprocessing of the model is conducted to reduce the potential searching space. Then an ant colony optimization based on neighborhood continuation search (ACOBNCS) is proposed to adjust the search step and improve the search speed. Multiple simulation experiment results verify the effectiveness of the path planning approach in the dimensions of time and space, and solve the difficulties in three dimensional global path planning of on orbit manipulation robots.

Key words: On orbit manipulation robot, Three dimensional raster model, Global path planning, Ant colony optimization based on neighborhood continuation search