Astrobee: Free-Flying Robots for the International Space Station
Trey Smith, Oleg Alexandrov, Jonathan Barlow, Jose Benavides, Maria Bualat, Roberto Carlino, Brian Coltin, Jose Cortez, Earl Daley, Jeffrey Feller, Lorenzo Flückiger, Terrence Fong, Jesse Fusco, Ruben Garcia Ruiz, Katie Browne, Simeon Kanis, Aric Katterhagen, Yunkyung Kim, John Love, Michael McIntyre, Blair McLachlan, Andres Mora, Zachary Moratto, Marina Moreira, Henry Orosco, In-Won Park, Christopher Provencher, Hugo Sanchez, Khaled Sharif, Ernest Smith, Ryan Soussan, Andrew Symington, Rafael Omar Talavera, Vinh To, Dawn Wheeler, Jongwoon Yoo
AI summary
Problem
Previous ISS robotic platforms required heavy astronaut involvement and consumables, limiting research productivity and failing to meet the needs of future uncrewed missions. This paper addresses the need for a safe, upgradeable, and fully autonomous free-flying robot that minimizes astronaut burden while operating without external navigation infrastructure.
Approach
The authors detail the design and deployment of Astrobee, which utilizes battery-powered fans for holonomic propulsion, vision-based localization without ISS markers, and autonomous docking for recharging to enable continuous, unsupervised operation throughout the station.
Key results
- Successful on-orbit deployment supporting nearly two dozen guest science projects
- Battery-powered fan propulsion enabling autonomous docking and consumable-free operation
- Vision-based navigation system allowing infrastructure-free flight across multiple ISS modules
- Comprehensive hardware and software architecture providing a reference design for future intra-vehicular robots
Why it matters
It establishes a proven, scalable platform for autonomous space robotics that reduces astronaut workload, accelerates microgravity research, and provides a critical blueprint for future Moon-to-Mars mission support.
Abstract
The Astrobees are free-flying robots that operate inside the International Space Station (ISS) and were launched to the ISS in 2019. Since then they have successfully performed hundreds of activities in space supporting almost two dozen separate research projects. The robots were designed to overcome multiple challenges unique to the ISS environment, including safety, upgradeability and maintainability, limited mass and computation, and unique localization challenges from lack of gravity and a constantly changing environment. This article provides an overview of Astrobee, from hardware and software design to deployment results and activities.