Automated Reconfigurable Mission Adaptive Digital Assembly Systems (ARMADAS) - NASA

NASA needs the capability to build large-scale solar power, communications, and habitat systems on other planets to support future deep space exploration. The ability  to autonomously assemble these types of structures in space instead of sending large pre-assembled hardware from Earth is critical to sustainable future exploration of Moon, the Red planet, and beyond. The Automated Reconfigurable Mission Adaptive Digital Assembly Systems (ARMADAS) project is developing software and hardware that will be able to autonomously assemble materials to make a variety of functional structures such as habitat structures, large antennae arrays, and even a spaceport. The team recently developed “builder robots” capable of autonomously working together and assembling small modular units, called “voxels,” to make a large variety of structures. These robots are barely larger than the voxels they work with, and take advantage of the regularity of these structures to build very large and precise assemb

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• Brooke Joseph