DLR's Advancements in Space Robotic Manipulation

Kurzfassung

Given the accumulation of space debris in key orbits around the Earth, robots capable of in-orbit repair, refueling and assembly are crucial for sustainable space exploration. DLR's contributions to space manipulation began in 1993 with the ROTEX experiment. A small six-axis robotic arm was launched aboard the D2 Space Shuttle mission, where it performed grasping of a free-floating object using various control modes, including teleoperation, shared autonomy and full autonomy modes. This was followed by ROKVISS, a two-joint arm mounted outside the ISS for more than five years. This experiment provided valuable scientific data on the behavior of torque-controlled joints in the harsh space environment. DLR's latest space robot, the CAESAR robotic arm developed in 2018, is a lightweight, compliant and fully redundant seven-joint manipulator designed for on-orbit operations. Ground testing of the space-destined CAESAR is performed using a cable-driven Motion Suspension System, which minimizes the torques acting on the joints. This allows complex tasks such as docking, latching and grasping to be validated in 3D space. This video details the advances in orbital manipulation made by DLR's Robotic and Mechatronics Center over the past 30 years, paving the way for the development of robotic technology for space sustainability.