Towards incremental autonomy framework for on-orbit vision-based grasping

in Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC-2021 (2021, October 29)

This work presents a software-oriented autonomy framework that enables the incremental development of high robotic autonomy. The autonomy infrastructure in space applications is often cost-driven and ... [more ▼]

This work presents a software-oriented autonomy framework that enables the incremental development of high robotic autonomy. The autonomy infrastructure in space applications is often cost-driven and built for a narrow time/complexity domain. In domains like On-orbit Servicing Assembly and Manufacturing (OSAM), this prevents scalability and generalizability, motivating a more consistent approach for the incremental development of robotic autonomy. For this purpose, the problem of vision-based grasping is described as a building block for high autonomy of dexterous space robots. Subsequently, the need for a framework is highlighted to enable bottom-up development of general autonomy with vision-based grasping as the starting point. The preliminary framework presented here comprises three components. First, an autonomy level classification provides a clear description of the autonomous behavior of the system. The stack abstraction provides a general classification of the development layers. Finally, the generic execution architecture condenses the flow of translating a high-level task description into real-world sense-planact routines. Overall, this work lays down foundational elements towards development of general robotic autonomy for scalablity in space application domains like OSAM. [less ▲]