Space Robotics Lab moves in at ITRL
The ITRL lab has a new roommate -- Space Robotics Lab. A small area is now dedicated to a testbed investigating weightless scenarios.
The Space Robotics Lab is a testbed for micro-gravity robotic experiments, where the team plans to demonstrate novel control and planning algorithms for space applications. This new lab is part of the DISCOWER WASP NEST project , which started in April 2022 and will run until April 2027.
"In this project, we aim at looking into the space and subsea environments - as we informally call them, weightless environments - from an holistic approach to control and planning, trying to develop methods that work across these two scenarios", says Pedro Roque, PhD student.
The work done at ITRL is a critical to the success of the project says Pedro. Here they will be able to showcase in realistic demos multiple application cases that they target in the DISCOWER. Furthermore, ITRL provides a large area for this lab (ca 15m^2), making it one of the largest facilities operating such systems at an academic level, which gives the team an edge regarding the type of experiments they can successfully demonstrate. In connection to ITRL, the project are also planning to setup a large container-based pool to demonstrate the subsea component of DISCOWER and run experiments that simultaneously happen in both underwater and micro-gravity conditions, which is a quite unique combination.