Traction-drive telerobot for space manipulation

Applied Intelligence, 1992

A popular conception of the evolution of remote manipulation is a progression from teleoperation to telerobotics and then to robotics. This is logical because in going from teleoperation to robotics there would appear to be a continuous decrease in manned workload, an increase in system complexity, and an increase in the amount of "intelligence" in the automated system. During the past 10 years NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) has been involved in all three areas. The decision on which system is most suitable for a task depends not only on the task, but on the allocation of responsibility for intelligence or high level control. The operator may be responsible for all intelligence and control functions, they may be shared between the operator and the automated system, or they may be performed by an autonomous system. This paper discusses some of the experiences in each area in applications related to possible space tasks and some of the lessons learned.

2005

Future space explorations necessitate manipulation of space structures in support of extra vehicular activities or extraterrestrial resource exploitation. In these tasks robots are expected to assist or replace human crew to alleviate human risk and enhance task performance. However due to the vastly unstructured and unpredictable environmental conditions, automation of robotic task is virtually impossible and thus teleoperation is expected to be employed. However teleoperation is extremely slow and inefficient. To improve task efficiency of teleoperation, this work introduces semi-autonomous telerobotic operation technology. Key technological innovations include implementation of reactive agent based robotic architecture and enhanced operator interface that renders virtual fixture.

AIAA SPACE 2013 Conference and Exposition, 2013

During Summer 2013, we conducted a series of tests to examine how astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS) can remotely operate a planetary rover. The tests simulated portions of a proposed mission, in which an astronaut in lunar orbit remotely operates a planetary rover to deploy a radio telescope on the lunar farside. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and preliminary test results.

1989

Telerobot systems are being developed to support a number of space mission applications. In low earth orbit, telerobots and teleoperated manipulators will be used in shuttle operations and space station construction/maintenance. Free flying telerobotic service vehicles will be used at low and geosynchronous orbital operations. Rovers and autonomous vehicles will be equipped with telerobotic devices in planetary exploration. In all of these systems, human operators will interact with the robot system at varied levels during the scheduled operations. The human operators may be in either orbital or ground-based control systems. To assure integrated system development and maximum utility across these systems, designers must be sensitive to the constraints and capabilities that the human brings to system operation and must be assisted in applying these human factors to system development. The simulation and analysis system is intended to serve the needs of system analysis/designers as an...

2nd IEEE International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT'06), 2006

This paper describes the ongoing development of a teleoperation platform for space robotic missions. The proposed platform consists of a ground control station, an offline simulation environment, a full-scale working model of the robot and the actual robot on the mission. From the simulation environment a path strategy is obtained and a set of commands is generated and sent to the ground control station using standardized files (XML) to describe how commands and data move between functional units, this way it is no longer needed to create custom software, and/or distributed objects to communicate with new systems. Instead, only providing an XML description of how the communication takes place will be required. Then the systems can parse and interpret the XML to generate the required commands to control the unit, interface with it, construct messages and display the data that is returned. A software prototype is developed for an asteroid exploration mission to evaluate the proposed platform.

Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, 2007

The objective of atelerobotic system is to connect humans and robots in order to reproduce operator actions at a distance. We must take numerous matters into account in order to efficiently produce such interaction, most of which are related to human interaction, distributed control, and information flow between operator and remote robots. All these topics are dealt with in depth in this book.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 1998

The International Space Station (ISS) will offer a unique infrastructure to enable scientists and engineers to conduct their experiments over a large timescale and to gain experiment results on a regular basis. The ISS offers both exposed accommodation of payloads and facilities inside the pressurised laboratory modules. For a number of reasons, manipulative tending of such payloads and the servicing of Space Station system elements cannot be completely performed by astronauts. This is why robotic systems are expected to play an ever increasing role in the operation of the ISS. This paper describes three robotics concepts which can be important enhancements of the currently approved ISS robotics infrastructure: a small relocateable system mounted in front of facility racks for tending of internal payloads, a medium size dexterous system to tend to payloads on an external platform, and an extension of the large European Robot Ann (ERA) by a dexterous bi-arm "end effector" for external system servicing.

2006

This paper describes the ongoing development of a teleoperation platform for space robotic missions. The proposed platform consists of a ground control station, an offline simulation environment, a full-scale working model of the robot and the actual robot on the mission. From the simulation environment a path strategy is obtained and a set of commands is generated and sent to the ground control station using standardized files (XML) to describe how commands and data move between functional units, this way it is no longer needed to create custom software, and/or distributed objects to communicate with new systems. Instead, only providing an XML description of how the communication takes place will be required. Then the systems can parse and interpret the XML to generate the required commands to control the unit, interface with it, construct messages and display the data that is returned. A software prototype is developed for an asteroid exploration mission to evaluate the proposed platform.

Autonomous Robots, 1997

The Telerobotics Program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of Space Science is developing innovative telerobotics technologies to enable or support a wide range of space missions over the next decade and beyond. These technologies fall into four core application areas: landers, surface vehicles (rovers), and aerovehicles for solar system exploration and science; rovers for commercially supported