Take the little floating ball that gave Luke Skywalker so much trouble during lightsaber practice, slap a pair of huge welder’s goggles on it and you start to get a picture of NASA’s latest foray into flying robots. Currently being tested aboard the International Space Station (ISS), MIT Space Systems Laboratory’s SPHERES-VERTIGO system is a free-flying robot with stereoscopic vision that is part of a program to develop ways for small satellites to autonomously create 3D maps of objects such as asteroids or disabled satellites.
The first part of the SPHERES-VERTIGO system is the Synchronized Position Hold Engage Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES). Developed as part of a DARPA project, SPHERES may look like a plastic toy, but it hides some fairly sophisticated technology inside. It is designed as an experimental testbed for guidance, navigation and control algorithms and is being used for autonomous docking, formation flying and tele-operation tests.
Three of the free-flying robots have been aboard the ISS since 2006. Each one is 21.3 centimeters (8.3 in) in diameter, weighs about 4.16 kilograms (9.17 lb) and moves about by means of a carbon dioxide cold-gas system for both propulsion and attitude control. Navigation is achieved by means of a ”pseudoGPS” ultrasonic time-of-
The first part of the SPHERES-VERTIGO system is the Synchronized Position Hold Engage Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES). Developed as part of a DARPA project, SPHERES may look like a plastic toy, but it hides some fairly sophisticated technology inside. It is designed as an experimental testbed for guidance, navigation and control algorithms and is being used for autonomous docking, formation flying and tele-operation tests.
Three of the free-flying robots have been aboard the ISS since 2006. Each one is 21.3 centimeters (8.3 in) in diameter, weighs about 4.16 kilograms (9.17 lb) and moves about by means of a carbon dioxide cold-gas system for both propulsion and attitude control. Navigation is achieved by means of a ”pseudoGPS” ultrasonic time-of-