WHEN: Tuesday, May 31, 16:30

WHERE: At X Laboratory (RDM, G2)

PART OF: RDX Entrepreneurs Club, X-Lectures

Dr. Roberto Lampariello (DLR), Visiting Scientist at X-Laboratory

Part-1: Technological Trends in Orbital Robotics at the DLR

Orbital robotics is an emerging field, in which both the public and private sectors worldwide are intensifying related activities in On-Orbit Servicing, Active Debris Removal and on-orbit assembly of large space structures. A newer application example in the realm of orbital robotics is that of intravehicular activities within a space station, to support astronauts, or, in the long term, to fulfill maintenance operations. Robotics itself is a very broad discipline and the orbital environment presents particular challenges, which my institute has been addressing for over two decades. As such, after briefly introducing the field, I will focus in this talk on some recent developments in robot technologies at the institute. This more technology-oriented discussion, will provide an overview of some current and future trends within the orbital robotics sector.

Part-2: Towards Generalizable Autonomy in On-Orbit Operations

As the amount of orbital debris grows so too does the need for on-orbit repair and deorbit solutions to avoid cascading Kessler syndrome. While a number of options have been proposed for capturing defunct satellites and other high-value debris, methods for performing close-proximity rendezvous with these objects are also necessary. However, a significant portion of these objects are tumbling with unknown angular orientation and rate; the rendezvous procedure for these tumbling objects is complex and must be performed in real-time, precluding human teleoperation or offline, on-the ground solutions. Therefore, autonomous rendezvous for these tumbling targets is highly desirable. A series of autonomous functionalities will be presented, including state estimation of the target motion, as well as motion planning and robust tracking control of the robotic spacecraft. A fully autonomous rendezvous pipeline was recently demonstrated in microgravity on resource-constrained hardware on the ISS.

BIO: The Speaker

Roberto Lampariello
Roberto Lampariello received his B.Sc. degree in aerospace engineering from Southampton University in 1990, M.Sc. degree in airplane aerodynamics from Cranfield University in 1991 and a specialization degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1998. He is since then employed as a researcher with the Robotics and Mechatronics Institute of the DLR in Germany, where he works in the fields of dynamics and control of free-flying space robots and in robot trajectory planning. Since 2012 he is lecturer at the Chair for Aerospace Engineering of the Technical University in Munich, for a course in orbital and robotic dynamics and control. Since 2017 he is team leader of the On-Orbit Servicing Operations and Validation Team. In 2021 he completed his PhD on optimal motion planning for object interception and capture at the University of Darmstadt. He participated to different missions and mission studies, such as ETS-VII (1998), DEOS (2008-14) and e.Deorbit (2015-16). He is currently co-PI in an ongoing mission on the ISS with the ASTROBEE system, to demonstrate methods for the autonomous approach of a chaser satellite to a free-tumbling target satellite.
OOS Anlage DLR