Robotic Manipulation and Capture in Space

"Christidi-Loumpasefski, O-O, and Papadopoulos, E., “Parameter Identification for an Uncooperative Captured Satellite with Spinning Reaction Wheels,” Proc. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS '20), Las Vegas, NV, USA, Oct. 25-29, 2020.”

Abstract:

The mission activities go hand in hand with technology developments. In the COMRADE project, ESA has promoted the design, development and testing of a control system for a free-flying robot for two missions: (a) Active Debris Removal (ADR) with a dedicated 7 DoF robotic manipulator and LAR gripper end-effector. (b) Refueling mission (see also Section 9.3) Here, a combined controller was tested on the OOS-SIM facility for the capturing of ENVISAT. The controller ran on a LEON4 computer, proving its applicability for space flight. Furthermore, an overview of the design and outcomes of the project were presented in (Colmenarejo, et al., 2018), to include a comparison between a robust H∞ controller and a nonlinear Lyapunov-based controller. The results from Monte Carlo simulations showed that although the H∞ controller performed better in meeting the given velocity requirements, the nonlinear controller was usually able to achieve a stable and successful grasp in presence of contact. The nonlinear controller was also presented in detail in (De Stefano, Mishra, Giordano, Lampariello, & Ott, 2021), including results from experiments performed on DLR’s OOS-SIM experimental facility.

more: here

EROSS PROJECT – EUROPEAN AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC VEHICLE FOR ON-ORBIT SERVICING

Abstract:

Current robotic developments for space application are making on-orbit servicing missions closer to re-ality, while also paving the way for future challenges like autonomous rendezvous with celestial bodies or active debris removal. Such technologies are being developed and integrated towards an experimental ground demonstration under the H2020 “European Robotic Orbital Support Services” (EROSS) project. It aims at developing, integrating and demonstrating the key European robotic building blocks within an autonomous solution for servicing tasks in orbit.Current robotic developments for space application are making on-orbit servicing missions closer to re-ality, while also paving the way for future challenges like autonomous rendezvous with celestial bodies or active debris removal. Such technologies are being developed and integrated towards an experimental ground demonstration under the H2020 “European Robotic Orbital Support Services” (EROSS) project. It aims at developing, integrating and demonstrating the key European robotic building blocks within an autonomous solution for servicing tasks in orbit.EROSS assesses and demonstrates the capability of a servicing spacecraft to perform medium and close-range rendezvous, and then to capture and manipulate a client satellite with a highest degree of autonomy. The client satellite is considered collaborative and prepared as it is designed with specific features to ease the rendezvous and capture. More importantly, it is assumed to be designed for servicing operations such as refuelling and payload replacement.This project is led by Thales Alenia Space with sup-port from GMV, National Technical University of Athens, PIAP Space, SENER, SINTEF AS, SOD-ERN, Space Application Services, with additional collaboration with MDA and QinetiQ.

EROSS project is co-funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program un-der grant agreement N°821904 and part of the Stra-tegic Research Cluster on Space Robotics Technolo-gies as Operational Grant n°7.

more: i-SAIRAS Virtual Conference 19–23 October 2020

Validation and Demonstration of EROSS project: the European Robotic Orbital Support Services

Corresponding Authors: Sabrina Andiappanea, Gautier Duranda, Vincent Dubanchet, Pablo Lopez Negroa, Davide Casua, Anne Giovanninia, Jurij D’Amicoa

Abstract

The European Robotic Orbital Support Services (EROSS) project aims at developing, integrating and demonstrating the key European robotic building blocks within an autonomous solution for performing servicing tasks in orbit, and prepare for the future rendezvous missions on a longer term.EROSS assesses and demonstrates the capability of an on-orbit servicing spacecraft to perform medium and close-range rendezvous, and then to capture and manipulate a Client satellite. The Client satellite is considered collaborative and prepared as it is designed with specific features to ease the rendezvous and capture, but more importantly, to enable servicing operations such as refuelling and payload replacement by the robotic Servicer vehicle.The project embeds key European Technologies by leveraging on actuators, sensors, software frameworks and algorithms developed in previous European Projects and focuses on boosting their maturity. Firstly, it focuses on increasing their functionalities in a synergetic way, in order to enable their fast implementation and integration for a space mission in the near future. Secondly, it aims at validating their performances in representative environments for a defined mission scenario in order to increase their Technology Readiness Level (TRL).The current paper aims at presenting the mission demonstration scenario and the numerical validation of the key building blocks for the rendezvous mission, including visual sensors and capture actuators. Due to the impact of the covid19 crisis, the results presented in this paper focus on the numerical implementation of the GNC loop only, while experimental tests are delayed to 2021 and will be introduced in a future publication.The overall Guidance Navigation & Control (GNC) architecture is presented in the scope of the collaborative rendezvous considered in EROSS project. The compliance of the GNC architecture is assessed based on the resulting closed-loop performances derived from numerical simulations. These latter cover both the unitary testing of the Guidance, Navigation and Control functions in open loop, and then their integration in the closed-loop scheme to validate the overall solution performance.This project is led by Thales Alenia Space with support from GMV, National Technical University of Athens, PIAP Space, SENER, SINTEF AS, SODERN, Space Application Services, MDA and QinetiQ.

more: https://cloud.piap-space.com/index.php/s/q8NOj9ZugbAKz7i 

Mission and System Design for EROSS project: the European Robotic Orbital Support Services

Corresponding Authors: Sabrina Andiappanea, Gautier Duranda, Vincent Dubanchet

Abstract

The European Robotic Orbital Support Services (EROSS) project aims at developing and integrating the key European robotic building blocks to demonstrate and enable an autonomous solution for performing servicing tasks in orbit and many future rendezvous missions.EROSS intends to assess and demonstrate the capability of the on-orbit servicing spacecraft to perform medium and close-range rendezvous, to grasp, capture and manipulate the satellite to be serviced. This latter is considered prepared and collaborative as it is designed with specific features to ease the capture phase and to perform servicing operations such as refuelling and payload transfer or replacement.The project embeds key European Technologies by leveraging on actuators, sensors, software frameworks and algorithms developed in previous European Projects. EROSS focuses on boosting the maturity of these key building blocks and increasing their functionalities and performances in a synergetic way to enable their fast implementation on a space mission.The current paper aims at presenting the mission scenario and the overall system design for both the servicer and the serviced satellites for such collaborative rendezvous missions. The different key building blocks will also be introduced, such as the sensors, the capture and docking interfaces, and the Guidance Navigation Control (GNC) subsystem of the servicer.The mission definition and trade-off are presented followed by the system design and the building blocks to be implemented and integrated for the overall solution at a functional level for the demonstration of the main tasks foreseen: rendezvous, capture, refuelling, and payload replacement.

This project led by Thales Alenia Space in France brings together the following companies throughout Europe: GMV (Spain), National Technical University of Athens (Greece), PIAP Space (Poland), SENER (Spain), SINTEF AS (Norway), SODERN (France), Space Application Services (Belgium), Thales Alenia Space entities (Italy and UK), with support from MDA (Canada) and QinetiQ (Belgium).

more: here