Development of a gripper for Chinese space robot

This paper presents a novel special robot gripper for Chinese on-orbit Satellite Serving. Because of the relative slow real time vision feedback rate (about 5Hz), the free-flight robot (FFR) will probably float to a new position and orientation during a long cycle after the switch off of satellite attitude control. A large-error tolerated gripper with two stereo cameras has been developed to capture the micro target satellite (MTS). Moreover, the gripper must lock the MTS's handle at the unique position and attitude after capture. The tactile sensor, angle sensor and temperature sensor etc. were highly integrated into the gripper, which made the gripper more intelligent. The same electronics as one the robot's joint was juxtaposed together, which composed of power supply unit (PSU), controller unit (JCU) and motor servo unit (MSU), to make the whole system more modular and reliably. There is a special designed handle on the MTS, which composed of two supporters and a cylinder with V shape at bottom. A weight-balanced passive 6-DOFs float target simulator has been developed to verify the function of the gripper under the zero gravity environments.