Abstract
Multibody dynamics with configuration changes are characterized by changes in the number and/or kind of constraint equations. Configuration changes mean the addition of impacts, changes of friction states, topological changes and so on. When we consider, for example, the capturing and removing process of the damaged satellites by redundant space robots, such a reconfigurable multibody dynamics must be considered. Dynamics of such a system has not been studied well though it is indispensable to develop the well-functioning automatic machines and robots in space as well as on the earth. We introduced the method to express the time-varying system topologies based on the graph theory and the linked-list, and reformulated the efficient dynamics algorithm based on the “order n algorithm” for forward dynamics of closed-loops systems. In this paper, we explain the above algorithms and how to implement a computer program using the object-oriented programming method. Furthermore, we examine how to apply these programs to space systems.
