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1968-69 – Deepstar 2000 Diving Saucer by Westinghouse.

The manipulator arm is simple as per all Cousteau/Westinghouse submersibles of this period with only two degrees of freedom. The arm is electro-hydraulic and the claw is of the clam-shell type, also referred to as an "orange peel" claw. Arm is also mechanically jettisonable for safety reasons.

1968-69 – Deepstar 2000 Diving Saucer by Westinghouse.

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See Cousteau's earlier SP-350 here and Deepstar 4000 here.

See other early Underwater Robots here.

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1968 – AUTEC I and II Submersibles by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics. Designated TURTLE and SEA CLIFF by the U.S. Navy.

Press Release – 1968 – Escape Capsule
GROTON, CONN.:  This artist's concept of an AUTEC Research Submarine shows the use of tools selected from an external tool compartment. In an emergency the crew can seperate the front section of the craft and float to ther surface. Two identical submarines, to be named AUTEC I and AUTEC II, are nearing completion for the US Navy at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics. They will be able to carry 3-man crews.

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See 6:52 into clip.

Source: Manned Submersibles, Bushby.

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Navy to get two new subs – 1968

AUTEC I and AUTEC II, two new deep submersibles being completed for the Navy by the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics, are similar in design to Alvin, except that they will be a little longer (25 feet), capable of a somewhat greater depth (6500 feet), they will have 2 mechanical arms instead of one, and a transparent plexiglass nose.

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Manipulators

Each submersible is equipped with two identical manipulators. Each manipulator can be equipped with tools to perform varied tasks such as drilling, cable cutting, and grasping of objects. These tools are stored in racks on the submersible and can be interchanged during a mission. Each manipulator is capable of seven degrees of freedom.
Each arm can reach 7 feet 1 1/2 inch, can lift 100 lb., and is electro-hydraulic and can be manually jettisoned. They are manufactured by General Dynamics. Source: Manned Submersibles, Bushby.

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See other early Underwater Robots here.

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EVA Pod – The EVA Pod is a fictional spacecraft used for extra-vehicular activity seen in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Jupiter spacecraft Discovery One carries three of these small, one-man maintenance vehicles.

[EVA – Extra-Vehicular Activity i.e. activity outside of the prime space vehicle.]

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Film stage.

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Detail of manipulator arms. Illustrations by Simon Atkinson.

It has always intrigued me as to why the manipulator arms were designed they way they were i.e. a pair of forearms on each arm. Practically one can only use a single arm/gripper at one time. In most scenes featuring the pod in action, only one arm/gripper are used at any one  time.

I feel the reason may be that, for large objects, the paired forearms act as a large gripper in itself. For the film, it may have been designed this way as the only practical means of recovering Poole's body, as seen in the two images below.

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Fred Ordway III was the key technical consultant for Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey" .

A lucky moment came in January 1965, as Ordway explained in a book, "2001: A Space Odyssey in Retrospect." He was in New York to meet with publishers for a book he and a colleague, Harry H.K. Lange, had written and illustrated about future life in space. He learned that his friend, Arthur Clarke, a British science writer, was in town and so requested they meet. During their discussion about the space program and Wernher von Braun, they learned each was developing story themes in common.

Clarke happened to be working with Stanley Kubrick on a screenplay for Space Odyssey, which was based on Clarke's earlier work, "The Sentinel." Ordway and Lange's book "Intelligence in the Universe", co-authored by Roger A. MacGowan of the Army Computation Center in Huntsville was essentially the same concept: man facing the immensity of the universe and that life may exist out among the stars.

They showed Clarke their artwork and talked more before adjourning for other engagements. Before leaving the club, Ordway got an unexpected call. It was Kubrick, whom Clarke had notified immediately after his meeting with Ordway and Lange. From then on he was engaged as Kubrick's technical consultant on space issues.

Footnote: August 2014:  Sadly, Fred Ordway passed away on July 1, 2014, aged 87. A Harvard graduate and a former NASA scientist for the Saturn V rocket, he had an unquenchable thirst for learning about the universe and excelled as an educator, researcher, consultant and author..

Front Elevation.

Side Elevation: Illustrations by Simon Atkinson.

Robert McCall's promotional film poster.

Stanley Kubrick on set with the Pods.

Portrait of Arthur C. Clarke.

Nemean's Space Pod design as described in Clarke's earlier short stories such as ‘Who’s There?’ and ‘Summertime on Icarus’ is much more of a stubby cylinder.

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Space Pod Specification: Sourced from here.

EVA Pod

Title: Grumman DC-5 EVA Craft
Number Produced:  45
14 for Space Station Five,
11 for Space Station Four
7 for Space Station Three***
5 Replacement vehicles
4 test vehicles
3 for Discovery One
1 Replica**
1 for Discovery Prototype
Mass at Earth Gravity: 1,387 Kg.
Overall Diameter: 1.98 m.
Capacity: One Person Standard; Three Person Emergency
Propulsion systems: Ten Mk 12 (140 Kgs. Thrust) for major course changes along all axes; Eight Mk 17 (35 Kgs. Thrust) for precision maneuvers; Eight Mk 8 micro-thrusters (10 Kgs.) for low-gravity station-keeping; Five Mk 14 (80 Kgs. Thrust)  provide roll; One Mk 37 (500 Kgs. Thrust) for use in emergency.
Life Support: 12 Hrs. (One Person)
Radar: Grumman EPS-2D; Long Range; Active Pulse
Other Equipment: Explosive Bolt Door Separation*; Short-range Object Approach System and Transponder; Complete HAL 9000 Data link System; Automatic Thruster Control; Auto Hover; Eight-Channel communication system; Advanced Manipulator Control System; Two-hour Oxygen Reserve System.
Notes: The Grumman DC-5 carries can carry little in the way of food and water stocks, due to short life support capacity. A single air conditioning vent is provided.
Misc. Technical Information: (From Frederick Ordway and the British Interplanetary Association)
Propulsion: A subliming solid system provides vernier propulsion, wherein the solid propellent sublimes at a constant pressure and is emitted from a nozzle. Such reaction jets will last for long periods of time, have great reliability and use no mechanical valves. The main propulsion system is powered from by storable liquids.
Mechanical Hand Controls: Selection controls are placed on each side so that the appropriate hand must be removed from the manipulator to select a tool or to park. Selection of a tool returns the arm to the 'park' position, where it leaves the 'hand', then the arm goes to the appropriate tool and plugs in. In doing so, it inhibits the 'finger' controls on the manipulator, so that when the operator returns his hand into the glove he can only move a solid object, not individual fingers.
Television: It was found possible to produce all-round TV coverage with eight fixed cameras. This, however, did not give a sufficiently accurate picture for docking or selecting a landing space. For this purpose, the field of view can be narrowed or orientated; controls are included for this purpose.
Normally, the TV link is occupied by the internal camera, so that the parent craft can monitor the pod interior. The pilot can switch in any other camera for specific purposes (survey, etc.) reverting to interior camera for normal work.
Proximity Detector: This is the safety system with omnidirectional coverage working from the main communication aerials. It gives audible warning when the pod approaches a solid object. This is necessary as a safety measure as the pilot cannot monitor seven or eight TV displays continuously. The system also detects an approach to an object, the speed of which is too high to be counteracted by the vernier thrust settings on the control system. In this event, full reverse thrust is applied, overriding the manual control setting. The system depends upon a frequency modulated transmission and under safe conditions results in a low, soft audible background signal. This continuous signal is considered necessary in order to provide a continuous check on a vital safety system. If the speed of an approach to an object becomes dangerous compared with the distance from it, the tone becomes louder and higher pitched, and, if unchecked, end in a shrill note accompanied by reverse thrust. The system also works in conjunction with a transponder (to the give the necessary increased range) to measure distance from the Discovery.
Flying Controls: Manual controls are considered necessary both as a standby and for local maneuvers. Two hand control sticks, each with two degrees of freedom and fitted with twist grips, provide the necessary control about six axes.
Analog information is presented for attitude, heading rate and distance; these can be referred to local ground (for landing, takeoff, etc.), course (which enables the pilot to face forward, head up, on any preselected course, or parent ship (for docking, local maneuvers, etc.) This data has to be presented, as the pilot has to act immediately on them. This is the most easily assimilated display. A variation in full scale rate, which can be applied by the control sticks, is included; this allows the full stick movements to result in any proportion of vernier motor thrust, thus giving a 'fine' control for local maneuvers.

Notes:
*When I think about it, I don't think the door ever separated from the pod. It seems that it was simply opened extremely quickly by the explosive bolts. If the door actually WAS blown off, it would have smashed into the airlock's outer door; breaking into several pieces. This would fly back towards Dave, and as many people would put it, that would be a very bad thing.
**This is non-operational, and do not carry any functional systems. The single replica is currently on display at the NASM's "21st Century Space Flight" display.
***Earlier Space Stations are not capable of supporting the design.

Interior of the Pod.

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Pre-production sketches.

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See other early Space Teleoperators here.

See other early Lunar and Space Robots here.

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Android Space Manipulator

Robots May Tend Ailing Satellites -One of the frustrations of scientists is "burned out" satellites, those which, because of a malfunction or a worn-out part, inertly orbit the earth, doing no worldly good. "Such a satellite becomes a million dollar bit of space debris for lack of a two-dollar part. It would be impractical if not impossible in most cases to send an astronaut to do the job and in the few cases, where practical, the expense would be prohibitive. The answer would seem to be a highly sophisticated robot space vehicle which could be manipulated by ground control. A National Aeronautics Space Administration contract to make design studies of such a "space repairman" has been awarded to the General Electric Space Systems Valley Forge, Pa. In its ARMS (Application of Remote Manipulators in Space) project, GE scientists envision an orbiting space complex consisting of tender (home base) satellite and one or more robot repairmen [text illegibie].

This complex could easily be put into a continuous 24-hour orbit by a booster such as a Titan III-C. The tender would be controlled by radio from a ground station, receiving instructions and navigational information on satellites requiring repair. Before the rendezvous with the disabled satellite, however, the tender and its resting repairman would have to make a linkup with a repair kit, containing replacement parts or modules, launched into orbit from the earth. After this docking the tender, repairman and repair, all joined in one complex, would change orbit to close on the satellite needing repair. The intricate maneuvering required to complete this rendezvous in the vastness of space and the ensuing repair job would be directed from earth. This is made possible by "eyes" in the space units. The tender would be equipped with at least one television camera and the robot repairman would have one or, more probably, two. The direction and focus of the cameras could be adjusted from earth. The robot repairman is a box-like creature with three multi-jointed arms and pincer-like fingers that can be operated by remote control. In addition to the information supplied by the TV camera, the manipulators will also feed information, much like human muscles and limbs when performing a job. This enables the ground-control station to make adjustments to properly conduct the repair. The repairman will be maneuvered by miniature attitude control rocket nozzles which can be operated from earth. Present space vehicles are not designed for such easy repair. Satellites of the future would be designed so that trouble-prone, sensitive or exhaustible parts would be located on the outer surface in easily replaceable modules. GE studies indicate that the ARMS project would pay off after 12 satellite repairs, another way of saying that the costs of the repair system would equal the replacement cost of 12 non-functional satellites and any succeeding repairs would be pure gain for the space system. And, of course, should one of the repairmen develop a malfunction, he will be operated on by another robot.

Source: Oakland Tribune (Newspaper) – September 15, 1968, Oakland, California 

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The spacecraft has an approximate weight of 530 pounds and is approximately 12 inches deep by 40 inches wide by 75 inches high (including antennas). It has two electric bilateral manipulator arms that are slave to a master control system in a remote site. The system has a payload capability of about 500 pounds and a mission duration of 10 hours (Interim – Kugath, 1969).

Subsystem Description

 Translation Subsystem

     The propulsion is accomplished by a common blow-down monopropellant hydrazine subsystem. It would have large rendezvous engines for translation to the worksite and smaller thrusters for attitude control and maneuvering.

Stabilization/Control Subsystems

 The attitude-control subsystem functions in two modes, 1) it stabilizes only the remote manipulator spacecraft; and, 2) it also stabilizes the worksite by a three-axis, rate-integrating gyro package. A momentum storage device reduces the thruster usage at the worksite.

 The spacecraft maneuvers are performed automatically; the inputs to the guidance computer are produced by (docked satellite). The attitude reference is supplied.

 The optical (video) system consists of two cameras  which

1) give the operator a three-dimensional display,

2) provide redundancy in case of a camera failure, and

3) serve as range finder to supply data to guidance/control subsystem for rendezvous and docking.

Actuator Subsystem

  This subsystem consists of three docking/stabilization arms and two manipulator arms. The manipulators are bilateral, slave type that resemble the human arms but

are not anthropomorphous. The manipulator characteristics are shown 'in Table 5-6 and dimensions are given in figure 5-22. Table 5-7 gives the weights and estimated power requirements for the remote manipulator spacecraft.

Source: SELECTION OF SYSTEMS TO PERFORM EXTRAVEHICULAR ACTIVITIES Man and Manipulator Contract # NA88-24384
Volume 2, Final Report – Prepared for Marshall Space Flight Center – 9 April 1970.

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Footnote: August, 2014 – This 1968 GE concept is the closest that resembles the Robonaut R2. The Robonaut R2 is currently the only humanoid robot in space and was delivered to the International Space Station in 2011. The current version can only operate internally, though.  There is an earlier dextrous dual-arm robot, called Dextre, delivered to the ISS in 2008, but this is not humanoid in shape and size.

Robonaut R2 shaking the hand of Station Commander, Dan Burbank.

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See other early Space Teleoperators here.

See other early Lunar and Space Robots here.

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A rather unusual electrical unilateral teleoperator is the Serpentuator (Serpentine Actuator) under development at Marshall Space Flight Center (fig. 109 above). The Serpentuator consists of links several feet long separated by joints driven by electric motors, or, in one version, electrohydraulic actuators. With maximum deflections of about 20° per joint, the teleoperator can be coiled up in circular loops 20 feet in diameter and housed in the shroud of a Saturn rocket. Using switch controls at both ends of the Serpentuator, the operators can transfer tools, retrieve objects, aid astronauts, and perform other tasks in weightless space where positive controlled motion over distances greater than a few feet are difficult.

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Crew and Cargo Transporters
Platforms for transporting men, and possibly cargo, fall into two general categories: those linked to the space-craft structures (serpentuator, trolley) and those capable of independent operation (LTV maneuvering work platform and Bendix EVA work platform).
Serpentuator – In 1968 a study was performed for NASA to determine the man/systems feasibility of using the MSFC-developed serpentuator as an EVA aid for film retrieval on the ATM mission. In this mission, the primary requirement for an EVA aid would be to assist the astronaut in transferring himself and seven fresh film magazines from the airlock-module egress hatch to each of the two ATM worksites–center work station and sun-end work station. After accomplishing this delivery task, the aid must assist the astronaut in returning himself and seven exposed film packages back to the hatch. The general requirements of the aid are that it possess the dynamics of motion are compatible with and controllable by a human operator (Bathurst and Mallory, 1968).
The Matrix study was an assessment of the degree to which these requirements were satisfied by the MSFC Serpentine Actuator or Serpentuator. This device consists of a series of connected, individually controlled and powered, articulated links with a roll-ring at the base and a payload cargo rack/ control station (CR/CS) at the tip. This device is depicted in Figure 4-7.

The serpentuator configuration selected for evaluation consisted of eight links and was 40 foot long and 4.5 inches in diameter. Each link was assumed to have a maximum deflection of 45deg in only one direction, and the base and CR/CS could be rotated +-180deg. This configuration was selected to be compatible with stowage requirements at launch.

An investigation of forces generated by serpentuators of varying lengths reported that a 54-foot long, 10-link configuration of the same diameter as that selected for study on the ATM could exert 9.5 pounds of force at the tip. A force of this magnitude is capable of accelerating a 500-pound mass (the approximate mass of the astronaut, film magazines, and CR/CS) at a rate of .025 fps2. If this acceleration is continued for a period of 20 seconds, the velocity of the payload will be approximately 4.2 fps.

   In an effort to establish the geometric capability of the serpentuator, the surface of the geometric figure described by the tip when each joint is moved sequentially through its 45o and the base roll angle is held constant was plotted and is depicted in Figure 4-8. If this area is then rotated +-180deg about the base, the solid which is generated represents  the volume which may be reached by the tip when no obstructions are present. Comparing this envelope with that of the ATM cluster, it was obvious that both film retrieval work stations and the airlock hatch were well within the reach envelope of the Serpentuator. It was, therefore, assumed that the Serpentuator was conceptually capable of performing as an EVA translation aid for ATM.

In the life support area, the primary problem was umbilical management. A system for controlling the umbilical was proposed and is depicted in figure 4-9.

Prime Vehicle Serpentuator System
The Prime Vehicle Serpentuator System is an advanced version of the serpentuator described in Section 4.4.1[see above]. This system, as applied to the prime vehicle class, is only in the conceptual stage of development, but most of the parameters described for the system used to support EVA also apply to the prime vehicle manipulator version. The astronaut control station would be replaced by a "robot" type subsystem containing video cameras, electrically driven bilateral actuator "arm" assemblies, etc. The man/machine interface problems would be minimized by designing these subsystems to closely resemble the human configuration (anthropomorphic and anthropometric). The control system would be more sophisticated than the EVA version, leaving few functions that would not be contained on pre-programmed modes. The astronaut would control and monitor/direct the system from a station within the prime vehicle with direct visual or video access
to the worksite, if necessary. Figure 5-11 illustrates this concept.

FIGURE 5-11 PRIME VEHICLE SERPENTUATOR SYSTEM
5-24

Source: SELECTION OF SYSTEMS TO PERFORM EXTRAVEHICULAR ACTIVITIES – Man and Manipulator – Contract # NA88-24384 – Volume 2, Final Report -Prepared for Marshall Space Flight Center – 9 April 1970.

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As the Serpentuator was to operate in a zero gravity environment, testing required devices such as air bearings or underwater testing as shown below.

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Publication number    US3631737 A
Publication date    Jan 4, 1972
Filing date    Sep 18, 1970
Inventors    Wells Frederic E
Original Assignee    Nasa

Remote control manipulator for zero gravity environment
US 3631737 A
Abstract
A manipulator for handling objects remotely in a zero gravity environment comprising a plurality of rigid tubular sections joined end-to-end by flexible joints to form an articulated arm based at one end and free at the other end. Each of the rigid sections is manipulated by slender control cables attached to the respective sections and selectively extended and retracted. The cables are guided along the length of the articulated arm by means including the tubular sections, apertured disks at the flexible joints, and apertured lateral projections at the ends of the tubular sections. The free end of the articulated arm is provided with means, such as a grapple or an electromagnet, for holding an object being handled.

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See other early Space Teleoperators here.

See other early Lunar and Space Robots here.

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