Related papers: Starbugs: all-singing, all-dancing fibre positioni…
Starbugs are miniature piezoelectric walking robots that can be operated in parallel to position many payloads like optical fibers across a telescopes focal plane. They consist of two concentric piezoelectric ceramic tubes that walk with…
The Australian Astronomical Observatory has extensively prototyped a new robotic positioner to allow simultaneous positioning of optical fibers at the focal plane called 'Starbugs'. The Starbug devices each consist of two concentric…
Starbugs are miniaturised robotic devices that position optical fibres over a telescope's focal plane in parallel operation for high multiplex spectroscopic surveys. The key advantage of the Starbug positioning system is its potential to…
The Australian Astronomical Observatory's TAIPAN instrument deploys 150 Starbug robots to position optical fibres to accuracies of 0.3 arcsec, on a 32 cm glass field plate on the focal plane of the 1.2 m UK-Schmidt telescope. This paper…
The TAIPAN instrument, currently being developed for the Australian Astronomical Observatory's UK Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, makes use of the AAO's Starbug technology to deploy 150 science fibres to target positions on…
We explore the range of wide field multi-object instrument concepts taking advantage of the unique capabilities of the Starbug focal plane positioning concept. Advances to familiar instrument concepts, such as fiber positioners and…
The ability to position multiple miniaturized wavefront sensors precisely over large focal surfaces are advantageous to multi-object adaptive optics. The Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) has prototyped a compact and lightweight…
This work presents the design of Stickbug, a six-armed, multi-agent, precision pollination robot that combines the accuracy of single-agent systems with swarm parallelization in greenhouses. Precision pollination robots have often been…
The integration of satellite communication into mobile devices represents a paradigm shift in connectivity, yet the performance characteristics under motion and environmental occlusion remain poorly understood. We present the Starlink…
Taipan is a multi-object spectroscopic galaxy survey starting in 2017 that will cover 2pi steradians over the southern sky, and obtain optical spectra for about two million galaxies out to z<0.4. Taipan will use the newly-refurbished 1.2m…
New multi-core imaging fibre bundles -- hexabundles -- being developed at the University of Sydney will provide simultaneous integral field spectroscopy for hundreds of celestial sources across a wide angular field. These are a natural…
The Australian Astronomical Observatory's 'tilting spine' fibre positioning technology has been redeveloped to provide superior performance in a smaller package. The new design offers demonstrated closed-loop positioning errors of 2.8…
The most startling examples of collective animal behaviour are provided by very large and cohesive groups moving in three dimensions. Paradigmatic examples are bird flocks, fish schools and insect swarms. However, because of the sheer…
Fiber-fed spectrographs dedicated to observing massive portions of the sky are increasingly being more demanded within the astronomical community. For all the fiber-fed instruments, the primordial and common problem is the positioning of…
In astronomy, multi-object spectrographs employ fibre positioning robots to couple the light from multiple astronomy sources (stars or galaxies) into multiple multi-mode fibres, which are distributed across the focal plane of the telescope.…
This paper presents initial flight results for distributed optical angles-only navigation of a swarm of small spacecraft, conducted during the Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment (StarFOX). StarFOX is a core payload of the NASA…
Highly-multiplexed, robotic, fiber-fed spectroscopic surveys are observing tens of millions of stars and galaxies. For many systems, accurate positioning relies on imaging the fibers in the focal plane and feeding that information back to…
At a fraction the total cost of an equivalent orbital mission, scientific balloon-borne platforms, operating above 99.7% of the Earth's atmosphere, offer attractive, competitive, and effective observational capabilities -- namely space-like…
This paper introduces the emerging field of astrobotics, that is, a recently-established branch of robotics to be of service to astrophysics and observational astronomy. We first describe a modern requirement of dark matter studies, i.e.,…
Modular robotics holds immense potential for space exploration, where reliability, repairability, and reusability are critical for cost-effective missions. Coordination between heterogeneous units is paramount for precision tasks -- whether…