Vol. 51 No. 4 (2014)   Aerospace Technology
Technical Papers

Space Demonstration of Astronaut Extravehicular Activity(EVA) Support Robot "REX-J (Robot Experiment on JEM)"Project Achieved Great Success

SHINYA WATANABE
TAKUYA KIMURA
HIROCHIKA MURASE
YUSUKE HAGIWARA
ICHIRO AWAYA
ATSUSHI UETA

"REX-J" (Robot Experiment on JEM), which was developed from 2008, was launched in July 2012 and carried out the world's first space demonstration of robotic spatial mobility technology over a course of about one year using 4 tethers (synthetic fiber strings) and an extendable robot arm on the Exposed Facility of the Japanese Experiment Module(JEM) "KIBO" in International Space Station (ISS), and achieved a great success. This report summarizes REX-J's development-to-operation topics including the mission outline and requirements, robotic development and achievements, and in-orbit experiments/results.