Spiral| Let's Connect
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Alligning and locking capsules to the space sttion
Summary
These days space travel is becoming something more real than just a dream. With more launches being done regullarly, we need to prepare for the new crew and ships. Those capsules and ships will need to have access into the ISS and to do so, there is a procedure called docking to attach itself to the station, but before doing so it needs to allign and verify the connection. Now this takes time and it´s not always succesful. What would happen if it doesn't latch right, well by oppening the "doors" the difference between the pressures would cause a big disaster losing part of the ship and the crew. That´s why we feel the need to look into something faster and precise; a robot arm in our opinion
How We Addressed This Challenge
Our objective for this project was to find a solution for alligning future shuttles and making sure they lock correctly with the space station. The mechanism needs to be simple but also fulfill its goal by pulling components together and attach one to the other on contact. We decided to take a capsule and instead of having the international standar mecanism, it uses a robot arm with a vision system that can attach to the space station using a special tool or gripper, and once locked into it, the robot will allign and move the capsule with it. Once the rest of the locking procedures have been made, the robot will detach itself from the space station and let the pilots through. We believe that even if it could take a large investment, since ships are being reused it could help with a safer and faster connection.
How We Developed This Project
W looked into different situations and technlogies such as cubesats and other locking mechanisms, but we believe there are still better solutions for which we tried desigining a possible robot arm that could be attached to the top of a space capsule. For the modelling part we used solidworks and a bit of Fusion 360, for the rest we used basic windows office software. We were thinking of using ABB robotstudio to mimick the movement of a robot in a solidworks assembly, but did not have enough time for it. The design made was only to be used as an illustration and not necessarily a prototype. Currently there are many versions of robots in space that could be used for the application we had in mind. Lastly, to mention our problems and achievements. Our problems, were to many for the amount of time we had, none of our initial ideas were beig approved so we had to brainstorm and think of sofething while doing sketches and coming up with concepts. For example instead of a robot, we initially had in mind using a space cable with an object at its tip, this object itself had a camera and a reaction control system (to be moved through space). It was too hard for a couple of amateurs to design such thing so we used something that was already simillarly available "robots". In my case I've had worked with ABB robots before, knew a bit about setting up a TCP, workobject, movements and a couple other applicatons that while combing it with a visual system, the movement could be autonoumous or it could help us guide it. We would live to keep working with this project and design it as it should be as well starting with physical prototypes.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We read about the current standards the space agencies have for locking and attaching mecanisms, also looked into other types of designs. For example, in the document with the title IDSS-ISS, we got information about the international docking system which was the dragon & boeing starliner and locking mechanism. We based out of the diagrams and drawings that were avaiable, and started making new drawing following specifications such as the rings diamaters, distances and the reaction control systems. One thing that was super useful was the video attached in the resources for this challenge; the video explained everything so cleaarly and helped us out to start working.
Project Demo
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1maCIrW_bLiVsuvyKJvZY9JuG1xc2cqZK/view?usp=sharing
Project Code
Data & Resources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP4_Q7iIlb0 (Motivation of the device)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHqFfux9KFI
https://www.internationaldockingstandard.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP4_Q7iIlb0&ab_channel=NASALangleyResearchCenter
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exep/technology/in-space-assembly/
https://strives-uploads-prod.s3.us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com/20110010964/20110010964.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIASEVSKC45ZTTM42XZ&Expires=1601740178&Signature=oi%2Fv38VVSvXocxdZtojBLjq%2FYJ4%3D
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20110010964
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWYpV