The development of an autonomous space robot operation testbed: ASROT.

Abstract

We developed a two dimensional operation testbed for an autonomous free-flying space robot such as an orbital maneuvering vehicle. This system is named ASROT (Autonomous space robot operation testbed) . Basically, ASROT consists of a satellite robot, a target, a host computer and a planar base. A host computer is only used for observation and data gathering of the system. A satellite robot is a satellite which can establish various tasks with a manipulator. A satellite is 620mm (W) ×805mm (H) ×620mm (L) . Its weight is 120 kg. This system is floating on a planar base using air bearings, and is able to fly around using thrusters for position control and a control moment gyro for attitude control. A manipulator is a flexible arm and 1.4m long. This paper proposes an operating system which is needed for real time autonomous control. A satellite robot installs hardware systems such as vision systems, board computers, image processing units, and software systems such as algorithms for path planning.