Engineers at Johns Hopkins Work on Robotic Solutions for Satellites

Engineers at Johns Hopkins University are working at arriving at a robotic solution for NASA for fixing satellites that breakdown or run out of fuel. The engineers at Johns Hopkins have already developed a similar solution that is being used by doctors for steering a machine while performing abdominal surgery.

The engineering team is looking at adopting a similar solution for addressing the satellite maintenance at NASA.

A demonstration of the solution was presented at Johns Hopkins Homewood campus on 29 November. The demonstration was executed with the help of the da Vinci medical console, which manipulated the industrial robot at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. The da Vinci system consisted of a three dimensional eyepiece through which the operator at Baltimore viewed the robot at Goddard. The operator was guided by the haptic or touch feedback from the robot. A mechanical engineering professor at Johns Hopkins explained that they will be applying the same technology for the robots at space for performing refuelling or repair work. One of the tasks that the robot has demonstrated is the ability to cut the plastic tape that holds the satellites refuelling port with care while being controlled from a remote location. NASA has granted licence to West Virgina University to work on the task; the University has chosen Johns Hopkins as their partner in this project. The task of cutting the plastic tape will prove to be more challenging when the satellite is orbiting the moon as the distance will cause a time delay between the operator and the site at which the robot is working. Through the success of this project, NASA will benefit by being able to avoid wastage of the millions of dollars spent on construction of these satellites, which they will incur if these satellites have to be abandoned.