Cooperative Manipulation Testbed: A Facility for Space Robot Control System Development

Abstract

The Cooperative Manipulation Testbed (CMT) in the Dexterous Robotics Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) is a facility for developing and testing control systems for space robotics and a general robotics testbed for system development. The CMT consists of three seven degree-of-freedom commercial manipulators with flexible tooling arranged in a configuration inspired by other dexterous space robots. Past projects supported by the CMT include controls system and softgoods development for the Robonaut project at NASA JSC, hardware-in-the-loop testing for the Robot Colonies project from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a visual servo control experiment for the Space Solar Power project.