This page presents a concept for a free-flying actuator puck: a compact vehicle that can move through a work area, align with a target, and exchange tools without changing its flight core.
A reusable flyer core
The model is organized around a load-bearing octagonal chassis. Its front face carries a standard tool port with kinematic registration, a hard latch, redundant power and data contacts, and a six-axis force/torque sensor. A compliant wrist sits between the port and the replaceable grapple attachment so that final alignment can absorb contact energy while measuring interface loads.
The rear face exposes a service port intended for charging, gas refill, recovery, or flyer-to-flyer chaining. A clear structural tunnel keeps the main grapple load path separate from the avionics.
Flight and service systems
Eight replaceable perimeter pods provide paired, canted nozzles. Distributed cold-gas tanks keep mass close to the tool axis, while reaction wheels provide fine attitude control without firing jets directly beside the workpiece. Four battery modules, a flight computer, and an independent safety controller occupy the internal structure.
The safety controller is shown as a bounded supervisory layer for thrusters, latches, collision limits, and retreat behavior. Navigation cameras surround the vehicle for relative navigation and cooperative fiducial tracking; work-face cameras concentrate stereo and structured-light metrology around the tool interface.
Explore the model
Use the controls above to switch between assembled, exploded, and cutaway views. The demo also exposes the replaceable tool, pulses the jet plumes, toggles automatic rotation, and provides front, side, reset, and PNG snapshot controls. Clicking a component reveals the description carried by the model.
The stated concept scale is one scene unit to five centimeters, with a body diameter of approximately twenty-five centimeters.
This is an interactive design surface rather than a finished vehicle specification. Its purpose is to make the proposed arrangement inspectable: the tool axis, service interfaces, propulsion pods, internal modules, and safety boundaries can be viewed as one coherent system.