Autonomous pre-alignment of a docking mechanism

The subject project can be described as the development and testing of a digitally controlled docking mechanism. The mechanism consists of a 6 DOF parallel manipulator for docking interface pre-alignment, and a machine vision sensor for real-time target tracking. The parallel manipulator also can be used for capture/latching, energy attenuation, and structural rigidization of docking, but the scope of this paper is the proof-of-concept demonstration of autonomous pre-alignment of a docking mechanism using machine vision.