Feasibility Study of Soft Releasing Method for the Debris Capturing Mechanism HKK using Air Floating Testbed

Abstract

Active Debris Removal (ADR) mission called Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration (CRD2) is planned. Debris capturing mechanism (HKK) technology is developed to perform reliable capture of the debris. As the mission study progressed, releasing function is required as a new requirement of the capturing end-effector of the mission.

In this paper, two solutions to meet the requirement are proposed: a robotic arm and a wrist rotational mechanism methods. An air floating testbed experiment were conducted to evaluate the feasibility of the two proposed methods.