Concept and Validation of Autonomous Robotic Assembly of Antenna from ESPA Class Spacecraft

This paper presents a concept for a low-cost, in-space robotic assembly mission that can be achieved from an ESPA (EELV Secondary Payload Adapter) ring. It also presents results of an in-lab validation experiment conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the concept. The central idea is to use autonomous robotics to incrementally assemble a segmented antenna from its discrete segments that are efficiently packed for launch. The antenna is assembled on a small spacecraft mounted on one port of the ESPA ring while the antenna segments are compactly stowed in another port of the ESPA. The robot and its avionics are integral to the spacecraft. Alternately, the ESPA could also be the host spacecraft. In the validation experiment, a commercially available C-band segmented, 2m class antenna is assembled using autonomous robotics in a manner consistent with the concept of operations of the mission concept. Vision-guided, force-controlled dexterous robotics is used in a scripted autonomy manner to successfully demonstrate the antenna assembly without any human intervention. The paper discusses the mission concept, the rationale behind using robotic assembly, details of the in-laboratory experiment, and salient observations.