DLR’s Advanced Telerobotic Concepts and Experiments for On-Orbit Servicing

Space robotics will become a key technology for the exploration of outer space and the operation and maintenance of space stations, satellites and other platforms, saving costs and relieving man from dangerous tasks. But we do not have to wait until robots are really autonomous or intelligent, since by modern teleoperation and telepresence we are able to remotely control robot systems from the ground in the sense of “prolonging man’s arm into space”. Humans, with their several hundred thousand years of evolution, will not adapt themselves to the hostile space environment, whilst robots, which have only been developed for just over 40 years, can be much more easily adapted to such an environment. As presented within this work, few pioneering telerobotic experiments like ROTEX, the first remotely controlled space robot system, ETS-VII, the first free-floating space robot experiment, or ROKVISS, Germany’s recent advanced space robot experiment on the International Space Station, have been proposed and conducted on the way towards a space robot assistant system for the usage as an artificial astronaut to perform On-Orbit Servicing (OOS) tasks.