Development of A Space Arm-Hand System for On-orbit Servicing

Facing current on-orbit servicing tasks, a space arm-hand system is designed and developed in this paper. Firstly, through contrast and analysis, the arm configuration of non-biased elbow and spherical wrist is identified, and the space hand system adopts the five-fingered dexterous robot hand. Secondly, the 6-DOF space arm system is accomplished including humanoid links and two different types of modular joints highly integrated in mechanical, electrical and control design. For the sake of attractive appearance and safety, the internal alignment design is adopted. Thirdly, the five-fingered space hand system is developed from modular fingers, multi-sensor integration system and hardware system. Finally, the system control strategy is formulated according to different on-orbit servicing stages and the corresponding ground verification test is arranged. The test result confirms on-orbit servicing capability of this space arm-hand system.