Avionics and Perching Systems of Free-Flying Robots for the International Space Station

This paper introduces NASA's new free-flying robot, Astrobee, especially focusing on its avionics and perching subsystems. Astrobee is a cube-shaped autonomous robot designed for various missions on the International Space Station (ISS). Its major goal is to offload routine and repetitive work from the ISS crews and assist their science activities. Astrobee is also designed for scientists to use it as a micro-gravity robotics research platform. It can host various science equipment and software, allowing scientists to conduct their experiments using Astrobees on the ISS. The robot has a small compliant, detachable arm with a griper so that it can perch on the ISS wall to support long duration tasks. This arm will grasp ISS handrails to hold its position without using propulsion or navigation subsystems to minimize power consumption. Due to its special missions and operating environment, Astrobee has a set of unique design requirements. This paper gives an overview of Astrobee and the details of its avionics and perching subsystems with distinctive design challenges. We also present the trade studies that we have conducted to decide the critical hardware and software components for the avionics.