Summary

Description

FUNCTION: Serves as a national testbed to support research in the emerging field of space robotics including autonomous rendezvous and capture, remote assembly operations, and machine learning. DESCRIPTION: Operated by the Naval Center for Space Technology, with strategic support from the Naval Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, this is the largest dual-platform motion simulator of its kind. It allows full-scale, hardware-in-the-loop testing of flight mechanisms, sensors, and logic of space robotic systems. The simulator also supports the study of other complex relative motion problems. Spacecraft orbit parameters, mass properties, and actuators are modeled in the central computer to enable the simulator to replicate vehicle motion response to external disturbances and internal orientation and position commands. Actuator signals normally going to wheels or thrusters are continually processed to compute incremental force and torque components that force the platform to respond dynamically as a spacecraft would on-orbit. INSTRUMENTATION: A dynamic motion simulator, with dual independent six-degreeof-freedom platforms, provides the ability to test space robotic systems under realistic dynamic and lighting conditions.