Abstract
This paper presents the overview of a space test of the world's first precise extravehicular telerobotic system named ARH (the Advanced Robotic Hand system). It was boarded on Engineering Testing Satellite VII (ETS-VII) developed by NASDA, and was launched into low-earth orbit in November 1997. MITI/ETL has been conducting the researches on a precise telerobotic system. This time MITI along with the Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer (USEF) have developed the ARH system and carried out the space experiment on ETS-VII to prepare the robot technologies for efficient industrial utilization of space in the near future. The objectives of the ARH space experiments are to evaluate the capability of the semidexterous robot hand for executing precise and delicate tasks and to validate the related technologies implemented in the system, which are multi-sensory, multi-DOF, and multi-finger control. Almost all of the experiments were carried out successfully and the results of them were found to be the expected ones.
