Space CoBot: a collaborative aerial robot for indoor microgravity environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces Space CoBot, a small collaborative aerial robot designed for microgravity environments like space stations, featuring a novel decoupled propulsion system and preliminary simulation validation.

Contribution

It presents a new holonomic hexarotor design with optimized propeller configuration and separate control strategies for translational and rotational movements in microgravity.

Findings

Successful simulation of the proposed control system

Decoupled propulsion enables precise movement in microgravity

Optimized propeller configuration for uniform thrust

Abstract

This paper presents a first contribution to the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations. In particular, we target a fleet of robots for collaborative tasks with humans, such as telepresence and cooperative mobile manipulation. We explore a propeller based propulsion system, arranged in such a way that the translational and the rotational components can be decoupled, resulting in an holonomic hexarotor. Since propellers have limited thrust, we employ an optimization approach to select the geometric configuration given a criteria of uniform maximum thrust across all directions in the body reference frame. We also tackle the problem of motion control: due to the decoupling of translational and rotational modes we use separate converging controllers for each one of these modes. In addition, we present preliminary simulation results in a realistic simulator, in closed loop with the proposed controller, thus providing a first validation of the followed methodology.