Space CoBot: modular design of an holonomic aerial robot for indoor microgravity environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces Space CoBot, a modular, holonomic aerial robot designed for indoor microgravity environments like space stations, enabling collaborative tasks with humans through innovative design, control, and simulation validation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel modular design and control approach for holonomic aerial robots tailored for microgravity environments, including simulation validation and optimization techniques.

Findings

Optimized geometric configuration for maximum thrust and torque.

Effective motion control with separate position and attitude controllers.

Simulation results demonstrate robustness to sensor noise and unmodeled dynamics.

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations (e.g., ISS). In particular, we target a fleet of robots, called Space CoBots, for collaborative tasks with humans, such as telepresence and cooperative mobile manipulation. The design is modular, comprising an hexrotor based propulsion system, and a stack of modules including batteries, cameras for navigation, a screen for telepresence, a robotic arm, space for extension modules, and a pair of docking ports. These ports can be used for docking and for mechanically attaching two Space CoBots together. The kinematics is holonomic, and thus the translational and the rotational components can be fully decoupled. We employ a multi-criteria optimization approach to determine the best geometric configuration for maximum thrust and torque across all directions. We also tackle the problem of motion control: we use separate converging controllers for position and attitude control. Finally, we present simulation results using a realistic physics simulator. These experiments include a sensitivity evaluation to sensor noise and to unmodeled dynamics, namely a load transportation.