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They need a drone to go and pick these dropped items. How much fun that would be!

crazygringo 3y ago
Now you've got me genuinely curious -- does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? It seems like it would be "relatively" simple, and useful for basic tasks that don't need a full human. I mean, now that you mention it, it really seems like that ought to be a thing, and that this would be a perfect use case for it. (Visual inspection of the ISS exterior would be another.)
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  I think in theory Robotnaut 2 was supposed to be something that could eventually be that: https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2/ https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2/ But going with a humanoid form factor made it overlay ambitious and all that complexity prevented it from being useful for the kinds of basic teleop + grab tasks you're envisioning.
- gumby 3y ago
  > A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? Please, for this application you should use the term, "gripping hand". To be more substantive: now you mention it I haven't heard of such a device and I also wonder why. Makes sense for inspection (but how much happens?) though retrieving lost tools sound quite difficult. And though difficult, it seems like something worth becoming good at. Seems like a 1U might be big enough to hold a small drone and some things to retrieve. However you'd have to design your experiment carefully so that something you failed to retrieve would rather soon reenter the atmosphere and not become dangerous orbiting junk. I don't know how easy this would be: what if the drone tried to grab it and added a non-normal (i.e. sideways) component that put the target on a potentially destructive trajectory?
  - ccooffee 3y ago
    Aside: does the phrase "grasping hand" have a particular meaning in robotics jargon? (Or is there a different reason to avoid that terminology?) To me a "gripping hand" is intuitively something that continuously holds an item. It might require human intervention to work, such as positioning my camera onto a universal tripod mount. A "grasping hand" (or "grabbing hand") would be something that transitions from empty-handed to holding an item.
    - r2_pilot 3y ago
      In this case the GP is making a reference to "The Mote in God's Eye". An alien species has 2 hands that are similar to humans, but they also have a 3rd arm, which leads them to say, paraphrased, "on the one hand, on the other hand, on the gripping hand" since it's strongest.
- Groxx 3y ago
  >does something like that exist? Technically: yes. Practically: it's so expensive to launch anything, much less a cleanup-bot, that it basically isn't done outside of research. This will probably change, but costs are unavoidably high so it'll probably always be rare. There's a decent summary of the area in this, from a quick googling: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/tech/space-junk-robot-esa-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/tech/space-junk-robot-esa-int... For small near-station use: I'm not sure! Some uses would certainly make sense, but I would be willing to bet that the risk of it going slightly too fast and damaging something makes it undesirable. It'll probably happen eventually, but I'd be a bit surprised if it is already a thing - most that I've seen have been armed machines that "walk" around the surface by grabbing things, which is much slower and safer.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    But if you lose something from the ISS, couldn't you chuck the drone out the airlock of the ISS and get it back before it's gone very far?
    - nerpderp82 3y ago
      A drone would potentially be an ISS damaging missile. It could cause a whole lot more problems than it might solve. Ever have your foot nailed by an RC car? That times 100. Also its propulsion gas could also setup oscillations in the station itself. So a lot of math would have to go into counteract this little bee flying around outside the station.
      - Groxx 3y ago
        Yeah, for ISS specifically you probably just consider the bag lost and use backups until the next resupply, for "cheap enough" and zero risk. ISS is in a rather low orbit, it requires quite a bit of upkeep (ha) to stay in space due to the tiny bit of atmospheric drag: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-would-iss-stay-in-orbit-if-it-didnt-get-reboosts https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-woul... That's true for everything else near that orbit, so the tool bag will probably burn up (well, re-enter anyway) in the atmosphere within a year or two, and be a complete non-issue after the next boost takes it to a permanently-different orbit.
- hydrogen7800 3y ago
  >does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand >Visual inspection of the ISS exterior Yes, minus the gripping hand. [0] "The sphere, which looks like an oversized soccer ball, was released by Mission Specialist Winston E. Scott during the STS-87 spacewalk and flew freely in the forward cargo bay for about 30 minutes." [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AERCam_Sprint https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AERCam_Sprint
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Main concern with a free-flying thing using propellants is that something goes wrong causing it to smack into the station hard. That's why the Canadarm handles inspection/gripping work. Much less risky to have a migrating robotic arm.
bouncycastle 3y ago
an R2D2 unit!

Now you've got me genuinely curious -- does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? It seems like it would be "relatively" simple, and useful for basic tasks that don't need a full human. I mean, now that you mention it, it really seems like that ought to be a thing, and that this would be a perfect use case for it. (Visual inspection of the ISS exterior would be another.)

mikepurvis 3y ago
I think in theory Robotnaut 2 was supposed to be something that could eventually be that: https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2/ https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2/ But going with a humanoid form factor made it overlay ambitious and all that complexity prevented it from being useful for the kinds of basic teleop + grab tasks you're envisioning.
gumby 3y ago
> A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? Please, for this application you should use the term, "gripping hand". To be more substantive: now you mention it I haven't heard of such a device and I also wonder why. Makes sense for inspection (but how much happens?) though retrieving lost tools sound quite difficult. And though difficult, it seems like something worth becoming good at. Seems like a 1U might be big enough to hold a small drone and some things to retrieve. However you'd have to design your experiment carefully so that something you failed to retrieve would rather soon reenter the atmosphere and not become dangerous orbiting junk. I don't know how easy this would be: what if the drone tried to grab it and added a non-normal (i.e. sideways) component that put the target on a potentially destructive trajectory?
- ccooffee 3y ago
  Aside: does the phrase "grasping hand" have a particular meaning in robotics jargon? (Or is there a different reason to avoid that terminology?) To me a "gripping hand" is intuitively something that continuously holds an item. It might require human intervention to work, such as positioning my camera onto a universal tripod mount. A "grasping hand" (or "grabbing hand") would be something that transitions from empty-handed to holding an item.
  - r2_pilot 3y ago
    In this case the GP is making a reference to "The Mote in God's Eye". An alien species has 2 hands that are similar to humans, but they also have a 3rd arm, which leads them to say, paraphrased, "on the one hand, on the other hand, on the gripping hand" since it's strongest.
Groxx 3y ago
>does something like that exist? Technically: yes. Practically: it's so expensive to launch anything, much less a cleanup-bot, that it basically isn't done outside of research. This will probably change, but costs are unavoidably high so it'll probably always be rare. There's a decent summary of the area in this, from a quick googling: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/tech/space-junk-robot-esa-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/tech/space-junk-robot-esa-int... For small near-station use: I'm not sure! Some uses would certainly make sense, but I would be willing to bet that the risk of it going slightly too fast and damaging something makes it undesirable. It'll probably happen eventually, but I'd be a bit surprised if it is already a thing - most that I've seen have been armed machines that "walk" around the surface by grabbing things, which is much slower and safer.
- jstanley 3y ago
  But if you lose something from the ISS, couldn't you chuck the drone out the airlock of the ISS and get it back before it's gone very far?
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    A drone would potentially be an ISS damaging missile. It could cause a whole lot more problems than it might solve. Ever have your foot nailed by an RC car? That times 100. Also its propulsion gas could also setup oscillations in the station itself. So a lot of math would have to go into counteract this little bee flying around outside the station.
    - Groxx 3y ago
      Yeah, for ISS specifically you probably just consider the bag lost and use backups until the next resupply, for "cheap enough" and zero risk. ISS is in a rather low orbit, it requires quite a bit of upkeep (ha) to stay in space due to the tiny bit of atmospheric drag: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-would-iss-stay-in-orbit-if-it-didnt-get-reboosts https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-woul... That's true for everything else near that orbit, so the tool bag will probably burn up (well, re-enter anyway) in the atmosphere within a year or two, and be a complete non-issue after the next boost takes it to a permanently-different orbit.
hydrogen7800 3y ago
>does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand >Visual inspection of the ISS exterior Yes, minus the gripping hand. [0] "The sphere, which looks like an oversized soccer ball, was released by Mission Specialist Winston E. Scott during the STS-87 spacewalk and flew freely in the forward cargo bay for about 30 minutes." [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AERCam_Sprint https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AERCam_Sprint
dotnet00 3y ago
Main concern with a free-flying thing using propellants is that something goes wrong causing it to smack into the station hard. That's why the Canadarm handles inspection/gripping work. Much less risky to have a migrating robotic arm.

bouncycastle 3y ago

an R2D2 unit!