Teleoperation and Robotics in Space

Increasingly, space teleoperators and robots (space telerobots) will take the place of astronauts in planetary and lunar scientific missions to reduce cost and risk. Terrestrial robots have much in common with space robots, but there are important physical differences arising from weightlessness, vacuum, the thermal environment, and the need to minimize mass. Because the technology for building intelligent space robots does not yet exist, they must be supervised by human operators. This book addresses these concerns, providing extensive, well-illustrated descriptions of existing, planned, and laboratory space telerobot systems, international designs, the role and capabilities of humans in system control and supervision, levels of control autonomy, the economic trade-offs of manned versus telerobotic space operations, and dynamics and control. The book provides engineers, scientists, managers, policy makers, and students with the underlying technical issues associated with human-supervised space robots and the design, justification, and use of practical space telerobot systems.