Leveraging Ingenuity Software and Avionics to Enable Robotic Arm Sampling for COLDArm

The Cold Operable Lunar Deployable Arm (COLDArm) project is developing an experimental robotic arm with the goal of demonstrating cold-operable actuators, sensors, and motor controllers in a lunar technology demonstration, saving energy and mass over conventionally heated systems. To support this goal, the JPL engineering team developed new flight software and avionics to demonstrate key functional manipulation capabilities. Drawing on the successful Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, significant avionics and software elements were leveraged as a starting point and modified to suit the needs of COLDArm. The COLDArm flight software uses the F Prime framework to best leverage heritage software from Ingenuity and deliver proven command and data handling capabilities. Robotics math libraries were leveraged from the Mars 2020 mission and adapted to support manipulator kinematics, collision detection, and body load propagation. A new COLDArm deployment was architected and additional components and libraries were developed to drive custom power and sensing avionics and to deliver an onboard robotic system model, capable of performing arm motions and fault protection. The COLDArm flight software runs on the RASK (Robotic Avionics and Sensor Kit) assembly, which builds upon the versatile and resilient Ingenuity avionics. The RASK avionics address COLDArm-specific requirements by adding new functionality such as a force-torque sensor interface and a 4K-resolution stereo camera pair. Like Ingenuity, the RASK avionics make extensive use of commercial-grade electronics components, which were determined to be sufficiently robust to radiation effects given the COLDArm mission profile. The COLDArm thermal environment is a key challenge, requiring the RASK design to incorporate several thermal enhancements at the schematic, layout, and enclosure design levels. This paper provides an overview of the RASK software and avionics and describes how they were adapted from Ingenuity for COLDArm and tested to ensure project requirements were met. This work contributes novel technology to the field of space robotic arm manipulation that may serve as a basis for future flight opportunities aligned with NASA scientific exploration objectives.