This paper gives an overview of the Chinese intelligent space robotic system. The system consists of a 6 DOF robot arm, a large-error tolerated gripper with two stereo cameras and onboard computer. The robot arm is composed of six identical modular joints, a big central hole in the modular joint was designed for the placement of the cables and plugs in the robot arm, which prevented them from damage of high temperature, radiation in the space environment and the motion of the robot. Joint torque sensor, joint position sensor and temperature sensors etc.., were integrated into the fully modular multi-sensory joint, which made the joint more intelligent. Also, a large-error tolerated gripper with two stereo cameras has been also designed to capture a microtarget satellite (MTS). A fault-tolerant onboard computer (OBC) with dual processing modules has been developed for the robot control. A zero gravity experimental system was developed to verify the functions of the robot arm under zero gravity environment

In this paper, FPGA (field programmable gate array) based hardware architecture for the HIT/DLR hand has been investigated. With the FPGAs for lower level control and DSP (digital signal processor) for higher level control, the whole hardware is very intelligent. By using the high capacity of FPGAs, the additional hardware such as communication controller and PWM generators, can be implemented in a single chip and the hardware system is more flexible and compact. In each finger there is an FPGA for data collection, brushless DC motors control and communication with palm's FPGA by point-to-point serial communication (PPSeCo). The kernel of the hardware system is a PCI-based high speed floating-point DSP for data processing, and FPGA for high-speed (up to 25Mbps) real-time serial communication with the palm's FPGA. There needs only 4 cables for the data transmission and the sampling cycle for each sensor is only 200 /spl mu/s. This paper presents the basic ideas behind the HIT/DLR hand's hard- and software architecture adapted to new needs in data processing.

This paper presents the current work progress of HIT/DLR Dexterous Hand. Based on the technology of DLR Hand II, HIT and DLR are jointly developing a smaller and easier manufactured robot hand. The prototype of one finger has been successfully built. The finger has three DOF and four joints, the last two joints are mechanically coupled by a rigid linkage. All the actuators are commercial brushless DC motors with integrated analog Hall sensors. DSP based control system is implemented in PCI bus architecture and the serial communication between the hand and DSP needs only 6 lines(4 lines power supply and 2 lines communication interface). The fingertip force can reach 10N.

This paper presents a novel passive robot system with 6 DOF force/torque sensor for measuring spacesuit joint damping parameters. Based on its special mechanical structure, a 3 DOF model of flexible IVA (intra vehicular activity) spacesuit joint has been built. Experimental results prove the effectiveness of the measuring principle. Potential application of the measuring system is discussed.