Space manipulators are mainly used in the spatial loading task. According to problems of the spatial loading diversity, the testing loading installing position, and the utilization ratio of a test platform, the space manipulator is asked to evaluate the position and attitude of itself. This paper proposes the Point Omnidirectional Coefficient (POC) with unit attitude sphere/circle to describe attitude of the end-effector, which evaluates any points in the attainable space of the manipulators, in combination with the manipulation's position message, and get relationships between its position and attitude of all points in the attainable space. It represents the mapping between sphere surface and plane for mission attitude constraints and the method for calculating volume of points space including attainable space, Omnidirectional space, and mission attitude space. Furthermore, the Manipulator Omnidirectional Coefficient based on mission or not is proposed for evaluating manipulator performance. Through analysis and simulation about 3D and 2D manipulators, the results show that the above theoretical approach is feasible and the relationships about link lengths, joints angles, attainable space, and Manipulator Omnidirectional Coefficient are drawn for guiding design.

This research is published on Journal of Robotics titled Omnidirectional analysis of spatial manipulator.