<h2>AAS 95-317</h2><h2>Near-Minimum-Time Maneuvering of Flexible Space Manipulators Along a Prescribed Path</h2><h4>M. J. Sadigh and A. K. Misra, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec</h4><h2> Abstract </h2>Maneuvering of a flexible multibody system along a prescribed trajectory is considered.  A perturbation technique transforms the equations of motion into two sets:  zero-order equations governing the rigid body motion and first-order equations involving the elastic oscillations.  In the first step, a torque is found to drive the rigid counterpart of the system, subjected to path constraints, from its initial state to final state in minimum time.  Subsequently the LQR method is used to find the additional torques to damp the vibrations.  The retrieval of a satellite along the local horizontal using a flexible manipulator is studied as a example.<br><br>