Virtual reality system of manned maneuvering unit taking into consideration the disturbance from an astronaut’s limbs

Abstract

This paper describes a manned maneuvering unit (MMU) virtual reality system. Based on the dynamics/kinematics model of an astronaut equipped with an MMU, a disturbance model of the astronaut s arms under zero gravity conditions is developed. After measuring three initial-position information, the astronaut s arms tracking information is inputted by some tracker setting on an operator using real-time emendation and correction. Finally, the paper presents two different results between loading and unloading the disturbance model within the progress of simulation. From the different results, we find that the motion of an astronaut s arms has greater influence over space walking with the same control mode. The MMU virtual reality provides a new method for the simulation of real space walking, and also a perfect method for developing prototype MMU.