Automatic deployment of structures has been a focus of much academic and industrial work on infrastructure applications and robotics in general. This paper presents a robotic truss assembler designed for space applications -the Space Robot Universal Truss System (SpRoUTS) - that reversibly assembles a truss column from a feedstock of hinged and flat-packed components, by folding the sides of each component up and locking onto the assembled structure. We describe the design and implementation of the robot and show that an assembled truss compares favorably with prior truss deployment systems.
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