Study of Reconfigurable Network System for Space Robotic System

• Published in: The Journal of Space Technology and Science Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 2_19 - 2_25
• Main Authors: MATSUMOTO, Shuichi, WAKABAYASHI, Yasufumi, UENO, Hiroshi, NISHIMAKI, Takeshi, ASANO, Mitsugu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Japanese Rocket Society 1999
• Subjects: Reconfigurable Network System; Space Robotic System
• ISSN: 0911-551X; 2186-4772
• DOI: 10.11230/jsts.15.2_19

NASDA has been doing research on space robotics to develop a practical and effective orbital servicing robot that can fulfill various orbital service missions autonomously. To realize such a robot, we have chosen a reconfigurable multi-robot system concept that is different from the large and complicated single orbital servicing vehicles. The concept is that multiple robots and dedicated upgrade modules are combined and reconfigured according to executing tasks. Hyper-OSV (Orbital Servicing Vehicle) is one of the reconfigurable multi-robot system concepts from our research. Hyper-OSV (HOSV) consists of reconfigurable manipulators, battery modules, communication modules, navigation modules, propulsion modules and so on. And HOSV changes its configuration of subsystems according to executing tasks. This paper shows the outline of the Hyper-OSV, explains the concepts of reconfigurable network system and the high performance parallel and distributed network computer system, and presents feasibility study results. (Author)