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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 23, 2015 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Brian Roberts

"Robotic Satellite Servicing - Ground Testing"

ABSTRACT -- This presentation will review the challenges in simulating on-orbit robotic satellite servicing on the ground at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. These challenges range from using industrial robots to simulate space robot dynamics to testing refueling operations that are impacted greatly by microgravity. NASA's ongoing Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), which launched on the last space shuttle, will be highlighted.

SPEAKER -- Brian Roberts is the Robotic Demonstration and Test manager in the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. His team is developing the capability to simulate the dynamics of a robotic system interacting with space objects and using industrial robotic platforms to simulate motion of space objects. The team is also maturing the robotic technology needed to perform operations in space. Before coming to Goddard, Brian spent 6 years as a research engineer at the University of Maryland. There he worked on teams that developed and tested various robotic systems ranging from those designed to service satellites and fly on the shuttle, to those that can put themselves together and take themselves apart in space, to those that assist physical therapists working with shoulder rehabilitation patients, to those that autonomously find and sample life at the bottom of the ocean. Most of his time was spent coordinating the design, assembly, testing, and operation of the systems and conducting much of the testing underwater in the lab’s Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility.

Brian earned a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and completed a Master of Science in the same field at the University of Maryland where he also completed coursework in Fire Protection Engineering.




Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov