Unexpected Collision Detection, Estimation, and Reaction for a Free-Flying Orbital Robot

What is it about?

Even if free-flying orbital robots, i.e., spacecrafts mounting a manipulator, are considered one of the most promising technology for future on-orbit missions, their use is still very limited. Several technological challenges have to be faced and overcome. One of the most critical is to deal with physical contacts between the orbital robot and a target object, both planned and unexpected. In particular, the latter ones are extremely dangerous since they can jeopardize the mission. We propose a strategy to detect, estimate and react to this kind of contacts, guaranteeing safety and stability of the system.

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