mjorbit: A Simulation Framework for Space Robotics

Abstract:This paper presents a general framework for simulating multi-body space robots with contact. We bring efficient, large-scale robot simulation to in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing applications. First, we perform an empirical trade study of methods for coupling orbit propagation with existing robotics simulation frameworks. Next, we present mjorbit, a general, flexible, and performant framework built on the MuJoCo engine widely used in robotics, to which we add key spacecraft dynamics, actuators, and sensors. We provide a low-latency C++ CPU backend and a high-throughput GPU backend behind a simple Python API. We demonstrate mjorbit by solving several realistic on-orbit case studies with both model-predictive control and reinforcement learning. Open-source code and examples are available at: this https URL

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2609.08010 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2609.08010v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.08010 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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