With the increasing interest in satellite on-orbit servicing and planetary exploration, missions requiring physical contact in space will become more common. Ground-based test and verification of dynamic responses of a spacecraft to arbitrary physical contact in space environment is very difficult. The existing technologies, such as parabolic flight, passive weight balance by suspension, floating on air-bearing, dropping test, neutral buoyancy in water, etc. all have significant limitations for testing microgravity impact-contact dynamics. A relatively new approach is to use robotics-based active hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation for ground-based verification of contact operation scenarios. This approach combines the computer simulation and physical experiment taking advantages of both. In such a system the dynamics of a spacecraft including the microgravity condition is predicted by computer simulation while the physical contact with complicated environment is represented by real hardware because such contact is very difficult to precisely model and simulate on computer. The concept design of a HIL simulation system using a 6-DOF cable robot will be discussed.

报告人介绍：
Ou Ma received a B.Sc. degree from Zhejiang University, China, and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree from McGill University, Canada, all in mechanical engineering with robotics specialty. His research interests are in dynamics and controls of multibody systems mainly for astronautic and medical applications. Prior to joining NMSU in 2002, Dr. Ma had worked in space industry as a senior project engineer and R&D technical leader for a number of projects developing space robotics technologies for the Space Shuttles and International Space Station. He had also participated in several design and concept evaluation projects for satellite on-orbit servicing missions including Germany-Canada’s TECSAS and DARPA’s Orbital Express Programs. Due to his extensive industrial experience, Dr. Ma is particularly interested in application-oriented research. He is currently conducting research in several projects sponsored by NSF, NASA, US Air Force and US Army. He has authored or co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications.