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Abstract

This paper describes the Dual-Use Mobile Detachable Manipulator, (DM)², which is a mobile manipulator designed to operate in a lunar station scenario. (DM)² is designed to perform two very different kinds of tasks: exploration on the lunar terrain, and maintenance work in lunar manufacturing plants. Both tasks are essential during the early construction of a lunar station. In order to be able to competently perform both tasks, (DM)² embodies a modular hardware design - namely a mobile base, and a detachable, symmetric manipulator arm with exchangeable grippers at each end. (DM)² can work with a number of possibly different arms, each of which may use several kinds of specialized detachable end-effectors. This flexible hardware configuration enables the robot to be useful for many Merent kinds of operations on a lunar base. In turn, this flexibility of hardware configuration necessitates a software control architecture that is equally flexible-dowing for on-the-fly reconfiguration, and independence of high-level functionality from the details of the current hardware configuration. (DM)² is designed to perform its tasks eithm autonomously based on a task model and realtime vision system, or under the supervision of a human operator through a custom realtime teleoperation interface.

Notes

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Vision and Autonomous Systems Center

Number of pages: 9

Text Reference

Christopher Lee and Yangsheng Xu, "(DM)^2: a modular solution for robotic lunar missions," International Journal of Space Technology, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1996, pp. 49-58.

BibTeX Reference

@article{Lee_1996_511,
   author = "Christopher Lee and Yangsheng Xu",
   title = "(DM)^2: a modular solution for robotic lunar missions",
   journal = "International Journal of Space Technology",
   pages = "49-58",
   year = "1996",
   volume = "16",
   number = "1",
}

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