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PINGU: Extending Air-Bearing Spacecraft Emulators with Open-Source Actuators and Learned Control for Contact-Rich Proximity Operations

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 20, 2026 · UTC

Low-cost planar air-bearing testbeds have matured into a standard proxy for free-flying spacecraft GNC, but they remain largely thruster-only and are rarely equipped for contact-rich, inertia-coupled manipulation. Building on the open-source ATMOS testbed, we contribute a reaction wheel and two force/torque-sensed robotic arms (LEVION) with interchangeable end-effectors, integrated as first-class control actuators through a unified ROS 2 abstraction layer. On top of the software stack we build a reinforcement-learning training environment and digital twin, and a controller that exploits these

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