NASA relies heavily on astronauts to perform Extra‐Vehicular Activities (EVA) as part of space construction and maintenance operations. Astronauts provide an unmatched capability and flexibility. In the future, this capability will be in even greater demand as space platforms become more modular making on‐orbit servicing, repair and reconfiguration routine. To assist crew, NASA is developing Robonaut, an anthropomorphic robot with human sized arms and hands that can work with many of the same interfaces designed for the space suited astronaut. Recently Robonaut has been used to investigate techniques for automated assembly, disassembly, and repair of space platforms. The current work focuses on techniques to reconfigure a modular truss system representative of the tasks necessary to convert a space solar power tug to a lunar orbiting solar power station in support of lunar exploration missions. An overview of these activities is given, detailing the assembly sequence and the infrastructure used by Robonaut to perform the reconfiguration operations. Advances in Robonaut’s capabilities are described and include: a grip surface augmentation to Robonaut’s gloves that provides a close approximation to the latest astronaut gloves, ensuring a secure grasp during truss coupler manipulation, and a shared control strategy that divides the Cartesian control of Robonaut’s hands between the teleoperator and the robot’s on‐board controller to minimize human workload during constrained tasks. To support truss reconfiguration experiments, infrastructure is required to stabilize and register the structure during reconfiguration. Details on the design and operation of the infrastructure, a small fixture, are given.


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    Title :

    Reconfiguration of EVA Modular Truss Assemblies using an Anthropomorphic Robot



    Conference:

    SPACE TECH.& APPLIC.INT.FORUM-STAIF 2006: 10th Conf Thermophys Applic Microgravity; 23rd Symp Space Nucl Pwr & Propulsion; 4th Conf Human/Robotic Tech & Nat'l Vision for Space Explor.; 4th Symp Space Coloniz.; 3rd Symp on New Frontiers & Future Concepts ; 2006 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA)


    Published in:

    AIP Conference Proceedings ; 813 , 1 ; 992-999


    Publication date :

    2006-01-20


    Size :

    8 pages





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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