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Overview
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The Sky Worker Project, funded by NASA, will create a team of mobile
manipulators capable of walking over extensive space solar power
stations and performing the assembly, inspection, and maintenance tasks
necessary for operating them outside the effective range of astronaut
construction crews. We will demonstrate a prototype manipulator in
April 2000.
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Space Solar Power Facilities
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NASA has begun exploring the possibility of building a constellation of
Space Solar Power (SSP) facilities. Each facility would be an
individual satellite on the order of 10 to 15 kilometers long. On the
end of the satellite would be an Earth pointing microwave transmission
antenna 1 kilometer in diameter. Each satellite would require 400+
launches to get its parts into orbit. These must then be assembled into
a complete facility.
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The assembly of these facilities will be accomplished using a robotic
workforce. All operations from truss deployment to the connection of
power couplings will be conducted autonomously, minimizing the need for
ground based human operators.
Once a facility has been completed the same robots that built it will
remain on board the satellite to conduct inspection and maintenance
operations.
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Current Project Scope
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Hardware
Sky Worker I will be an autonomous robot designed to conduct Assembly,
Inspection, and Maintenance (AIM) operations on an SSP facility mockup
on the ground. It will be capable of walking along a truss structure,
building a truss structure through the manipulation of individual truss
components, placing and securing simulated microwave transmitter units,
attaching power couplings, inspecting transmitter units, and replacing
transmitter units. Sky Worker I will demonstrate these capabilities in
April 2000.
Simulation
Our simulation environment, Sky Sim, will allow us to test complex robot
capabilities. Operations on extensive space structures, zero g
operations, and multiple robot tasks like the manipulation of massive
objects will be demonstrated through this software.
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This page is taken from The Robotics Institute website
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