Research/ ORBITAL ROBOTICS
The Simulated Micro-Gravity Experiment of the Intra-Vehicular Legged Mobile Robot for ISS Automation
Kazuki Takada, Kentaro Uno, Koki Murase, Taku Okawara, Masazumi Imai, Warley F. R. Ribeiro, Seiko Piotr Yamaguchi, Riichi Itakura, Akiko OTSUKA, Tetsuya INAGAKI, Masaru WADA, Kazuya Yoshida
Surface Mobility & TerramechanicsOpenAlex topic: Robotic Locomotion and Control · Design, Mechanisms & HardwareOpenAlex keyword: robot prototype · Manipulation & Graspingtext match
Intra-Vehicular Robots (IVR) are expected to enhance automation and facilitation, assisting astronauts in on-orbit stations such as International Space Station (ISS) or a commercial space station. Cargo manipulation and transportation are representative tasks that IVR is expected to perform instead of human astronauts. Cargo transportation under micro-gravity requires mobility and fixation of the robot’s base, which is hard for free-flyer robots already working in ISS. In this paper, we present the robot prototype of IVR to execute cargo transportation inside ISS. The robot prototype (scaled-down sized) has legs and grippers to grasp the hardware interfaces installed in ISS: seat tracks or handrails. The concept of stable rail-gripping movement is demonstrated under the simulated micro-gravity experiments by the air-floating testbed.