Smart sensing for space processing and automation

Smart sensing capabilities that resolve the components of force into multiple degrees of freedom can significantly enhance intelligent grasping and manipulation for space‐based and ground‐based laboratory automation and robotic end‐effectors. A single sensor can resolve forces into normal and shear components such that grip force, mass, acceleration, object contact, center of gravity, and object movement in the end‐effector can be detected. The Smart Vector Sensors have the ability to detect light contact as well as normal and shear forces with high frequency response. These sensors enable more intelligent feedback for automation systems making possible new and more versatile robotics applications that now are constrained by limitations in sensing, reacting to, and controlling an end‐effector’s interface with its environment. The sensor can be configured into various shapes to conform to the tips and surfaces of specific laboratory supplies, containers, control knobs, tools, and can be designed for a wide variety of force ranges and sensitivites. The current effort is aimed at developing sensors for immediate application in materials processing, life‐science experiments, and other internal teleoperated/automated robotics; in extravehicular robotics for satellite servicing, repair, and assembly operations; and for commercial application on the ground. ORBITEC, through an SBIR with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, has evolved, developed, and implemented these sensors from technology originating from the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics.