Design of a Novel Attached Foot for Space Crawling Robot

Abstract

With the rapid development of space technology, the complexity of spacecraft is increasing and the cost of spacecraft is growing. Therefore, it is increasingly important to use space crawling robot to provide state sensing and maintenance services of large spacecraft extravehicular equipment. In order to ensure the reliable attachment of the robot to the target star in the gravity-free space environment, this paper proposes an attached foot scheme which can be applied to the space crawling robot. The proposed attached foot integrates the two technical approaches of claw grabbing and dry adhesion, which can effectively solve the repeatable attachment problem of the star surface with different characteristics. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed technical approaches are verified by simulation.