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Project Aeroaranhas: Support spaceship for space assembly and maintenace
Summary
Aeroaranhas are a set of small ships that have the function of making assembly and maintenance in space components. The main mechanism of the ship concerns four mechanical arms of different sizes. These arms can do a variety of activities because they can automatically attach to different modules using ZipNut technology. Aeroaranhas have a claw that internally contains a coil and, at its ends, has electromagnets attached to it. The approach system is made by induction of a local magnetic field in the other element that must be fixed or built, a coordinate identification system according to information provided in the challenge and a vacuum suction system coupling by SMA materials.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The project "Aeroaranhas" consists of the elaboration of a small maintenance ship that has a system for coupling the ships and other space components, such as satellites. In addition, inside this ship there are components necessary for maintenance to be carried out. We separated the ship into essential parts for the project:
1) The robotic arms
1) The robotic arm system. There are four coupled arms on the nave. Two of different sizes. These arms have three joints which allow them to move completely across the space. Each arm will contain different modules that can be changed depending on maintenance and construction. We built some modules that we will leave below. For greater viability, the modules will be connected
to the arm by means of equipment that we have created, which helps the connection mechanism of the two parts. This feasibility is only possible because such a mechanism created by us allows the arm, which can do a whole 360 degree inspection around itself, using ZipNut technology to do the threading and final locking of the modules.
(Equipment created by us to facilitate the connection mechanism of the mechanical arms and the modules)
(Projection of the 3d model of the maintenance ship with its claws)
2) The coupling system
The coupling system was developed based on the Aristotle
lantern system. This coupler has two main mechanisms of operation:
electromagnetism and suction. later, we will
present all the equipment and demonstrate the feasibility of our project.
First, we
will detail the electromagnetism system in this coupling claw. In this sense,
there will be a claw with three structures with mechanical movement. Each
structure contains two connected electromagnets and two vacuum suction systems.
(There were 6 electromagnets and coils as in this image on the claw)
(Coupling system with a part of the claw in which the electromagnets and coils will be found)
How We Developed This Project
Our project was inspired by the sea urchin chewing mechanism, called Aristotle's lantern, which is composed of five mandibles made of calcium plates. The plates are connected by muscles or mouths, to scrape algae off the rocks and other surfaces, as well as to bite and chew. The image shows Aristotle's flashlight present in urchins
And so, to develop it we verified what could be the usefulness of this mechanism in space, we thought about the construction and maintenance spacecraft for the space bodies, using the mechanism of Aristotle's lantern to attach the ship to the body in which we would perform the maintenance or assembly, developing the following prototyping to fix the space body to the ship.
Then to carry out the maintenance of the ships we thought in the robotic arms, which has been gaining a wide of aplicatioons in the realization of industrial processes. So, we thought about arms that can change their tools, modifying the mechanism used, such as using drills, tweezers and suckers, according to the following ones:
And we designed the arms in our spacecraft, in order to have two large robotic arms for services that require greater reach, and two smaller arms for more delicate services, according to the design:
To change the modules of the tools, we thought about using a mechanism called ZipNut, which would facilitate the exchange of modules, aiming to use an autonomous exchange, this mechanism was developed by NASA, and is represented in the image below:
In order to get all mechanisms working togetrer, we thought in a software with the following operation: in order to schedule maintenance, the administrator will access the Aeroaranhas system and make the schedule depending on the available Ship. In real time the ships will check for schedules, if there is scheduled maintenance, it performs the maintenance and stored the execution log. The System architecture is composed by a Server station where the Admin application and the database on a server at Nasa are implemented, and the client systems installed on the Ships. On the server, the application will be accessed via a web browser so that operations for requesting services, inserting, changing and deleting data in the database can be carried out.
Finally, we researched the materials that we could use to build the ship and the components it will assemble in space, and then proposed the use of Antero 800NA material, which is already used in some ships that NASA sends to space.
Tools:
The tools used for project development were the CAD software Solidworks and AutoCAD, Photoshop software for image production and editing, and Powerpoint software for assembling presentations.
Encountered troubles:
When thinking about coupling by electromagnetism, we came across the absence of electromagnetism in some bodies, which could occour in the connection of two components, so through research we thought of another way to perform this coupling by vacuum suction, based on a project developed by Susanne Kirsch and Felix Welsch, both from the University of Saarland, Germany, which is a reference.
We also faced problems to fit the modules of the arms, which we solved through the zipnut mechanism, a technology developed by NASA.
Another problem found was the connection of all developed mechanisms, which was solved with a software that would connect the ship to the ISS and to NASA's ground station, in such a way as to perform the commands for the operations, verification of the processes that the ship is performing by means of a computer vision and development of a database that would store the commands sent to the ship and the data received from it.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
In order for our mechanism to be able to locate components in space in order to perform their maintenance, NASA will be used to make this precise location and tracking the spacial components that need maintenence, like satellites, other spacecrafts or even the International Space Station (ISS). In addition, as the identification of the structural mecanisms, construction and database of components in space, data from the NASA Agency and his partners can be used in order to aggregate and update the Machine Learning system used in robotic arms.
In the images, we can observe the software WXtrack, that we can use to locate the satellites, for example, in full ISS mode. At that way, with the NASA’s data, we can integrate completely our solution, because our mecanism will have the knowleadge about the component’s construction, It can learn about the details and finally, It can move exactly where It need.
Project Demo
Data & Resources
< suction mechanism - https://www.inovacaotecnologica.com.br/noticias/noticia.php?artigo=garra-robotica-vacuo-sem-ar-comprimido&id=010170180406#.X3p6s1KSmCh >
< zipnut - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k28DdqVuqQc >
< We also receive guidance from some tutors in Brazil >