NASA's InSight spacecraft has used its robotic arm to help its heat probe, known as "the mole," dig nearly 2 centimeters (3/4 of an inch) over the past week. While modest, the movement is significant: Designed to dig as much ...
Space Exploration
Oct 17, 2019
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NASA's InSight lander, which is on a mission to explore the deep interior of Mars, positioned its robotic arm this past weekend to assist the spacecraft's self-hammering heat probe. Known as "the mole," the probe has been ...
Space Exploration
Oct 03, 2019
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NASA's InSight lander on Mars has captured the low rumble of marsquakes and a symphony of other otherworldly sounds.
Space Exploration
Oct 01, 2019
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The bit carousel—a mechanism that will play a key role in the acquisition, containment and eventual return to Earth of humanity's first samples from another planet—has been incorporated into NASA's Mars 2020 rover.
Space Exploration
Aug 16, 2019
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Equipped with visionary science instruments, the Mars 2020 rover underwent an "eye" exam after several cameras were installed on it. The rover contains an armada of imaging capabilities, from wide-angle landscape cameras ...
Space Exploration
Aug 06, 2019
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The robotic arm on NASA's Mars 2020 rover does not have deltoids, triceps or biceps, but it can still curl heavy weights with the best. In this time-lapse video, taken July 19, 2019, in the clean room of the Spacecraft Assembly ...
Space Exploration
Jul 29, 2019
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The launch period for NASA's Mars 2020 rover opens exactly one year from today, July 17, 2020, and extends through Aug. 5, 2020. The mission will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and land at Mars' Jezero ...
Space Exploration
Jul 18, 2019
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The InSight lander has been on Mars for 213 Sols on its mission to understand the interior of the red planet. It's armed with a seismometer, a temperature and wind sensor, and other instruments. But it's primary instrument, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 05, 2019
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Behold the "mole": The heat-sensing spike that NASA's InSight lander deployed on the Martian surface is now visible. Last week, the spacecraft's robotic arm successfully removed the support structure of the mole, which has ...
Space Exploration
Jul 01, 2019
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When InSight landed on Mars on Nov. 26th, 2018, it deployed a parachute to slow its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. As it approached the surface, it fired its retro rocket to slow it even more, and then gently ...
Space Exploration
Jun 17, 2019
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A robotic arm is a robot manipulator, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement. The links of the manipulator can be considered to form a kinematic chain. The business end of the kinematic chain of the manipulator is called the end effector and it is analogous to the human hand. The end effector can be designed to perform any desired task such as welding, gripping, spinning etc., depending on the application. For example robot arms in automotive assembly lines perform a variety of tasks such as welding and parts rotation and placement during assembly.
In space the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System also known as Canadarm or SSRMS and its successor Canadarm2 are examples of multi degree of freedom robotic arms that have been used to perform a variety of tasks such as inspections of the Space Shuttle using a specially deployed boom with cameras and sensors attached at the end effector and satellite deployment and retrieval manoeuvres from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle.
The robot arms can be autonomous or controlled manually and can be used to perform a variety of tasks with great accuracy.
The robotic arm can be fixed or mobile (i.e. wheeled) and can be designed for industrial or home applications.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
