A hybrid soft material robotic end-effector for reversible in-space assembly of strut components

Maxwell Hammond; Anthony Dempsey; William Ward; Stephen Stewart; James H Neilan; Jessica Friz; Caterina Lamuta; Venanzio Cichella

doi:10.3389/frobt.2023.1099297

A hybrid soft material robotic end-effector for reversible in-space assembly of strut components

Front Robot AI. 2023 Jun 26:10:1099297. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2023.1099297. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Maxwell Hammond¹, Anthony Dempsey², William Ward³, Stephen Stewart⁴, James H Neilan⁵, Jessica Friz⁶, Caterina Lamuta¹, Venanzio Cichella¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, United States.
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, United States.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States.
⁵ Space Technology and Exploration Directorate, Langley Research Center, NASA, Hampton, VA, United States.
⁶ Simulation Development and Analysis Branch, Langley Research Center, NASA, Hampton, VA, United States.

Abstract

Based on the NASA in-Space Assembled Telescope (iSAT) study (Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 2019, 51, 50) which details the design and requirements for a 20-m parabolic in-space telescope, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) has been developing structural and robotic solutions to address the needs of building larger in-space assets. One of the structural methods studied involves stackable and collapsible modular solutions to address launch vehicle volume constraints. This solution uses a packing method that stacks struts in a dixie-cup like manner and a chemical composite bonding technique that reduces weight of the structure, adds strength, and offers the ability to de-bond the components for structural modifications. We present in this paper work towards a soft material robot end-effector, capable of suppling the manipulability, pressure, and temperature requirements for the bonding/de-bonding of these conical structural components. This work is done to investigate the feasibility of a hybrid soft robotic end-effector actuated by Twisted and Coiled Artificial Muscles (TCAMs) for in-space assembly tasks. TCAMs are a class of actuator which have garnered significant recent research interest due to their allowance for high force to weight ratio when compared to other popular methods of actuation within the field of soft robotics, and a muscle-tendon actuation design using TCAMs leads to a compact and lightweight system with controllable and tunable behavior. In addition to the muscle-tendon design, this paper also details the early investigation of an induction system for adhesive bonding/de-bonding and the sensors used for benchtop design and testing. Additionally, we discuss the viability of Robotic Operating System 2 (ROS2) and Gazebo modeling environments for soft robotics as they pertain to larger simulation efforts at LaRC. We show real world test results against simulation results for a method which divides the soft, continuous material of the end-effector into discrete links connected by spring-like joints.

Keywords: autonomous robotic assembly; in-space assembly; modular manipulator; soft material robotics; soft robotics.

Grants and funding

Funding for this work was provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Space Technology Mission Directorate Center Innovation Fund/Internal Research And Development program, and the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium (80NSSC20M0106).