Dexterous Whole-Body Manipulation for Robotic Lunar Operations

Autonomous robotic systems will play a critical role in NASAs efforts to develop and sustain a manned presence in cislunar space, on the lunar surface, and beyond. However, operating these systems through highly asynchronous connections presents significant challenges beyond normal terrestrial or near-earth applications. Moreover, plans to employ robots for mission infrastructure such as habitats or in-situ production of oxygen or propellant, or for expanded science applications in the absence of humans, drastically increases the demands on the movement and manipulation capabilities of the robot. To meet these demands, we must both increase the mobile and dextrous manipulation capabilities of these systems, as well as ensure that human operators have the necessary tools to operate them with confidence. Building on our previous work in fault management and recovery for complex motion planning and execution, we will augment our platform for supervised autonomy to enable execution of complex mobile manipulation tasks with high degrees of operator confidence. We will build a representative hardware system with multiple arms and a mobile base, and integrate it into our software application. Finally, we will assemble behavior trees to demonstrate using supervised autonomy to complete relevant lunar construction, science, or habitat caretaking tasks in a representative ground environment. NASA’s Artemis program to establish a long-term lunar presence includes a variety of autonomous systems including robots for construction and maintenance of habitats, reducing astronauts’ workloads, and conducting scientific endeavors in the absence of humans. The existing body of mobile manipulation systems on other bodies in the solar system is limited. However, the vast majority rely on some version of remote teleoperation by a human to complete any assigned task. This operational paradigm is slow, requiring vast amounts of planning, operator time, and data bandwidth. To achieve the operational cadences demanded by the Artemis program, we require new modalities for human-machine teaming. PickNik is developing a hardware agnostic platform for supervised autonomy that empowers humans to command a remote robot to complete complex autonomous tasks with minimal input. The proposed work will increase operators' confidence by improving safety and recovery tooling, as well as drastically increase the capabilities of our application by adding support for mobile, multi-arm manipulation. Objective 1: Augment safety and recovery tooling for the human-robot system Build additional safety checks, including capabilities for environment monitoring and online collision detection. Ensure the operator is equipped with necessary interfaces to understand the autonomous system’s plans and intervene when necessary. Objective 2: Support whole-body planning with mobile base, dual-arm equipped robot systems We will ensure that our platform, MoveIt Pro, supports a whole-body planning for a serial manipulator mounted on a mobile base. Objective 3: Assemble and test a representative hardware system We will build a hardware system using commercial off-the-shelf components similar to those being used in demonstrations by NASA. We will then integrate the hardware with our software application, and demonstrate completion or relevant supervised autonomous tasks in a representative ground environment. Primary Deliverables: configuration and documentation for integration of a mobile base and multi-arm system with MoveIt Pro software, behaviors, and assembled behavior trees demonstration of the successful execution of an exemplar cislunar task using a physical multi-arm equipped robot system integrated with MoveIt Pro relevant data for hardware used during testing
Benefits: Our Phase II work will develop confidence in autonomous, complex robots including mobile base and multi-arm systems which will be utilized on the Artemis program, martian operations, and intra-vehicular robot technology for science utilization and spacecraft caretaking. A mobile base enables movement throughout a human habitat, through airlocks, and around the lunar surface. Multi-armed systems provide flexibility and ability including crawling, multiple camera views for inspection and manipulation tasks, and grasping and assembling structures PickNik’s software product, MoveIt Pro, has applications for commercial space customers in the areas of commercial Low Earth Orbit destinations (CLD), In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM), lunar and planetary missions. On earth, we have worked in manufacturing, warehouse management, defense, agriculture, and marine (oil rig maintenance, deep sea exploration) environments.