Abstract
In order to meet the assist requirements of extravehicular activity (EVA) for astronauts, such as moving outside the international space station (ISS) or performing on-orbit tasks by a single astronaut, this paper proposes an astronaut robotic limbs system (AstroLimbs) for extravehicular activities assistance. This system has two robotic limbs that can be fixed on the backpack of the astronaut. Each limb is composed of several basic module units with identical structure and function, which makes it modularized and reconfigurable. The robotic limbs can work as extra arms of the astronaut to assist them outside the space station cabin. In this paper, the robotic limbs are designed and developed. The reinforcement learning method is introduced to achieve autonomous motion planning capacity for the robot, which makes the robot intelligent enough to assist the astronaut in unstructured environment. In the meantime, the movement of the robot is also planned to make it move smoothly. The structure scene of the ISS for extravehicular activities is modeled in a simulation environment, which verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Highlights
In recent years, space exploration has been regarded as an important strategic development direction by the aerospace powers and relevant independent research institutions in the world [1]
This paper aims to verify the principle of the proposed method with the developed AstroLimbs, which will not be affected seriously by the actual size of the work scene
Training Results and Evaluation For the training process, the robot is reset to be in the position of State1
Summary
Space exploration has been regarded as an important strategic development direction by the aerospace powers and relevant independent research institutions in the world [1]. With the rapid development and application of robot technology and artificial intelligence, the improvement of relevant technologies in the space exploration field have been promoted significantly [2,3,4,5]. For the EVA on orbit service, astronauts usually need to complete long-time and complex tasks, such as the on-orbit assembly, maintenance and so on. When they move outside the cabin, they usually have to climb and move only under the assistance of safety rope, which is consumes a lot of energy and is apt to cause fatigue and trauma for the astronauts [7]. The above problems will affect astronauts’ safety and greatly limit the working duration of extravehicular activities
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