Validation of Space Robotics in Underwater Environments via Disturbance Robustness Equivalency
🤖 AI Summary
This work proposes a dynamic mapping approach based on disturbance robustness equivalence to address validation discrepancies between underwater testing and actual space missions caused by dynamical differences. By simulating microgravity conditions in a near-neutral buoyancy underwater environment, the method integrates signal temporal logic task specifications, disturbance robustness optimization, closed-loop spacecraft dynamics control, and online disturbance estimation to construct underwater validation tasks that exhibit equivalent robustness to their space counterparts. The framework is experimentally validated using both an underwater robotic platform and a high-fidelity planar spacecraft/CubeSat simulator. Results demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively reproduces the behavioral characteristics of real space missions, thereby ensuring the fidelity and validity of ground-based verification for on-orbit operations.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
We present an experimental validation framework for space robotics that leverages underwater environments to approximate microgravity dynamics. While neutral buoyancy conditions make underwater robotics an excellent platform for space robotics validation, there are still dynamical and environmental differences that need to be overcome. Given a high-level space mission specification, expressed in terms of a Signal Temporal Logic specification, we overcome these differences via the notion of maximal disturbance robustness of the mission. We formulate the motion planning problem such that the original space mission and the validation mission achieve the same disturbance robustness degree. The validation platform then executes its mission plan using a near-identical control strategy to the space mission where the closed-loop controller considers the spacecraft dynamics. Evaluating our validation framework relies on estimating disturbances during execution and comparing them to the disturbance robustness degree, providing practical evidence of operation in the space environment. Our evaluation features a dual-experiment setup: an underwater robot operating under near-neutral buoyancy conditions to validate the planning and control strategy of either an experimental planar spacecraft platform or a CubeSat in a high-fidelity space dynamics simulator.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
space robotics
underwater validation
disturbance robustness
microgravity simulation
mission validation
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
disturbance robustness
underwater validation
space robotics
Signal Temporal Logic
motion planning
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