A deployable and inflatable robotic arm concept for aerospace applications

Palmieri, Pierpaolo; Gaidano, Matteo; Troise, Mario; Salamina, Laura; Ruggeri, Andrea; Mauro, Stefano

doi:10.1109/metroaerospace51421.2021.9511654

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The development of inflatable space robots has demonstrated the feasibility of fluid‐actuated soft robots for space applications. [ 62 ] The piecewise constant‐curvature (PCC) model is commonly used to describe fluid‐actuated soft robots. This model approximates a soft manipulator axis as a series of mutually tangent arcs of constant curvature.…”

Section: Design and Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress, Challenges, and Prospects of Soft Robotics for Space Applications

Zhang

Quan

et al. 2022

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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The development of space robots is vital to broadening human cognitive boundaries. Space robots have been deployed in space science experiments, extravehicular operations, and deep space exploration. The application of space robots undoubtedly reduces the risk and cost of space activities. Traditional space robots primarily utilize rigid structures, resulting in limited degrees of freedom, which restricts their operational capabilities. In contrast, soft robots with greater flexibility and robustness may be used for future space exploration. Soft robots applied in space environments must overcome significant challenges associated with ultrahigh vacuum, microgravity, extreme temperatures, and high‐energy radiation. Herein, a comprehensive analysis of the key advantages of soft robots is presented based on the special requirements of the space environments for soft robots. Furthermore, brief insights into how soft robots must be changed in terms of their design, modeling, fabrication, sensing, and control to adapt to space environments are discussed. Specifically, soft robot scenarios with potential space application value are introduced. Finally, opinions regarding the potential directions of soft space robots are provided.

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Section: Design and Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress, Challenges, and Prospects of Soft Robotics for Space Applications

Zhang

Quan

et al. 2022

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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“…In the current prototype, after the deflation, robot packing is assisted by user. A version with automatic wrapping is under development and described in [44].…”

Section: Pneumatic Line and Deploymentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The prototype has been developed after considerations from previous works, where preliminary control strategies [43] have been investigated. Two different applications are considered: a first one dedicated to open space missions, in which a large robotic harm is needed for debris capture or berthing operation [44], and onboard application, where a soft collaborative robot can help the crew in its tasks [45].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a Lightweight and Deployable Soft Robotic Arm

2022

Self Cite

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Soft robotics represents a rising trend in recent years, due to the ability to work in unstructured environments or in strict contact with humans. Introducing soft parts, robots can adapt to various contexts overcoming limits relative to the rigid structure of traditional ones. Main issues of soft robotics systems concern the relatively low force exertion and control complexity. Moreover, several fields of application, as space industry, need to develop novel lightweight and deployable robotic systems, that can be stored into a relatively small volume and deployed when required. In this paper, POPUP robot is introduced: a soft manipulator having inflatable links and rigid joints. Its hybrid structure aims to match the advantages of rigid robots and the useful properties of having a lightweight and deployable parts, ensuring simple control, low energy consumption and low compressed gas requirement. The first robot prototype and the system architecture are described highlighting design criteria and effect of internal pressure on the performances. A pseudo-rigid body model is used to describe the behavior of inflatable links looking forward to control design. Finally, the model is extended to the whole robot: multi-body simulations are performed to highlight the importance of suitable sensor equipment for control development, proposing a visual servoing solution.

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“…Visual servoing is a vision-based robotic control method that allows the robot to interact with its environment by capturing images using a camera and extracting image feature information to achieve closed-loop control. Visual servoing technology enables robots to fully perceive their task environment and has been widely researched and applied in areas such as target grasping and tracking [1][2][3]. Depending on the number and types of cameras employed, visual servoing can be categorized into monocular visual servoing [4], binocular visual servoing [5], and multi-camera visual servoing systems [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Image-Based Visual Servoing for Three Degree-of-Freedom Robotic Arm with Actuator Faults

Li,

Peng,

et al. 2024

Actuators

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This study presents a novel image-based visual servoing fault-tolerant control strategy aimed at ensuring the successful completion of visual servoing tasks despite the presence of robotic arm actuator faults. Initially, a depth-independent image-based visual servoing model is established to mitigate the effects of inaccurate camera parameters and missing depth information on the system. Additionally, a robotic arm dynamic model is constructed, which simultaneously considers both multiplicative and additive actuator faults. Subsequently, model uncertainties, unknown disturbances, and coupled actuator faults are consolidated as centralized uncertainties, and an iterative learning fault observer is designed to estimate them. Based on this, suitable sliding surfaces and control laws are developed within the super-twisting sliding mode visual servo controller to rapidly reduce control deviation to near zero and circumvent the chattering phenomenon typically observed in traditional sliding mode control. Finally, through comparative simulation between different control strategies, the proposed method is shown to effectively counteract the effect of actuator faults and exhibit robust performance.

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A deployable and inflatable robotic arm concept for aerospace applications

Cited by 12 publications

References 34 publications

Progress, Challenges, and Prospects of Soft Robotics for Space Applications

Progress, Challenges, and Prospects of Soft Robotics for Space Applications

Design of a Lightweight and Deployable Soft Robotic Arm

Image-Based Visual Servoing for Three Degree-of-Freedom Robotic Arm with Actuator Faults

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