Towards Intuitive Control of Space Robots: A Ground Development Facility with Exoskeleton

This paper describes a novel ground development facility that is currently being built at the European Space Agency. The facility can be used to develop and test new man-machine interfaces for tele-control of dexterous space manipulators. Furthermore, the facility allows comparing performance of existing input devices, such as conventional joysticks, with novel devices, such as exoskeletons. The ground testbed allows conducting tele-manipulation experiments with a real robot and to measure performance metrics during remote operations. The experimental comparisons planned to be undertaken with the test-bed are outlined