STAR LAB

University of Surrey

Servicing Satellites: Robotics for Space Repairs and Manufacture

When your car needs a service, you take it to a mechanic, but what happens when a satellite needs repairs or upgrades? In this demo, you’ll get to see some of the robotic technologies that can perform remote repairs and upgrades in space, such as deep-learning based pose estimation, robotic manipulation and grasping that can be used for tasks like in-orbit docking and assembly of space mirrors.

Meet the Team

At Space Technology for Autonomous and Robotic systems Laboratory (STAR LAB), we are a team of academic scholars, engineers and roboticists whose vision is to build on four decades of R&D heritage in small spacecraft engineering within the Surrey Space Centre and extend this philosophy to advance autonomous systems and robotics for space. We also look at transfer of our knowledge and technologies to terrestrial applications and to help maximize impact of our research work.

The STAR LAB leads Surrey’s involvement within the UK-RAS Network, and was an active participant and co-organiser to the UK Robotics Week. We are also the hosting research lab of the UKRI/UKSA hub on the Future AI and Robotics for Space (FAIR-SPACE). Our other international community activities include leading the IEEE-CIS Task Force on Intelligent Space Systems and Operations, UK-RAS White Paper on Space Robotics and Autonomous Systems, TAROS 2017, etc.