DESIGN, INTEGRATION, AND TESTING OF AN AUTONOMOUS MULTI-BODY SPACECRAFT SIMULATOR FOR LOW GRAVITY HOPPING AND GRASPING

Abstract

Mobility around spacecraft and space stations in orbit is vastly different from movement on the Earth’s surface. As autonomous robotic technology continues to advance at a rapid pace and as its use in space proliferates, it becomes increasingly important to explore autonomous robotic mobility approaches. The study of hopping and grasping dynamics will lead to more efficient maneuvering without using propellant (a non-renewable resource in space). Hopping could preclude the necessity of dangerous docking maneuvers between spacecraft and space stations and greatly reduce if not eliminate the use of propellant for mobility. This thesis reports the design, assembly, integration, and testing of several hardware and software components used on the Naval Postgraduate School’s Spacecraft Robotics Laboratory’s ManiSat Spacecraft Simulator and planar low gravity testbed, POSEIDYN. All of the components allowed for the testing of propellantless maneuvering of ManiSat in order to demonstrate basic hopping and capturing dynamics in a low gravity environment. New hardware components include robotic grippers, modular wrist joints, and testbed rails and mounting accessories. New software includes gripper and wrist calibration programs, as well as maneuver controllers and trajectory calculators.