<title>Kinesthetic aided spacecraft rendenvous: an application of object-resolved telerobotics</title>

Abstract

A concept referred to as object-resolved telerobotics (ORT) is introduced in this paper in which the human interface to the master is a hand-held proxy for the object to be manipulated. Twist or wrench application to the master by the operator becomes a twist or wrench command to the object. The advantages of ORT are: 1-projected improvement in operator performance resulting from direct command of the object, 2-reduced amount of information that must be transmitted to and from the remote site and 3-opportunity to apply novel forms of shared control and kinesthetic feedback and to use simpler force reflecting masters. The concept has broad application in human supervision of any semi-autonomous system. In this paper, its use is demonstrated in producing cross-axis kinesthetic feedback to an astronaut or ground controller to accomplish spacecraft (s/c) rendezvous, a task that normally is performed with only visual feedback. In cross-axis kinesthetic feedback, the s/c attitude and lateral misalignment are kinesthetically sensed by the operator as a reduction in the programmed velocity in the nominal approach direction. The influence which misalignment has on the programmed velocity is increased as the closing distance is decreased to safely "funnel" the s/c into docking position. The master required to accomplish this has mixed unilateral/bilateral functionality that is demonstrated using a laboratory prototype in conjunction with a computer simulation of s/c rendezvous.