Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Understanding how living organisms function within their surrounding environment reveals the key properties essential to designing and operating next-generation space robotics. Softness of biological tissues and their efficient information processing are the two central factors enabling organisms’ complex behavioural interactions with the environment. Currently, bio-inspired soft robots and neuromorphic hardware, inspired by the nervous system, are emerging, introducing a high degree of flexibility and computational efficiency in robotic systems. This CRC research program proposes two categories of shape-morphing soft robotic systems for future in-orbit and planetary space robotic missions. Space manipulators with hyper-flexible long slender booms and continuum end links, forming large soft grippers, will be deployed in on-orbit servicing and debris removal missions. They have the capability of safe interaction with sensitive payloads and capturing differently-shaped celestial objects. On the other hand, two-dimensional shell-type shape-morphing robots with various degrees of mobility will be the next generation of remote probes facilitating scientific discoveries in extraplanetary exploration missions. Flexible autonomy is necessary for both categories of soft space robotic systems to enable their adaptable and intelligent operation in harsh and partially understood outer-space environments. This research program argues that neuromorphic computational substrates, working based on spiking neural networks, not only offer the essential computational efficiency in soft robots, but they also provide the required cognition for their long-term autonomy. This CRC research program will facilitate the space sector with safe and reliable robotic systems for on-orbit servicing of our existing space infrastructure to sustain their uninterrupted services and it also opens up new horizons for exploring regions of our solar system, not feasible before this time.