Design and Performance of a Berthing Space Manipulator

This paper presents a 5R1T manipulator design for berthing tasks with the satellite type CubeSat. The proposed lightweight low-cost solution is capable of holding and transferring objects up to 24 kg. The berthing task is presented to grasp the satellite and moving it to the berthing port in a dynamic simulation using the Autodesk Inventor package. For defined positions of the satellite and the berthing port, the positions of the end-effector are assumed, and the angular positions of the other joints are measured. The problems of grasping and slipping of the satellite are outlined and solved by changing the geometry of the fingertips.