October 3, 2005

This year’s American Society for Precision Engineering Annual meeting to be held in Norfolk, Virginia October 11-13 will include a technical paper describing CSA’s hexapods. The presentation “Pointing Parallel Manipulator Design for Asymmetric Geometries and Cryogenic Vacuum Environments” will highlight two hexapods delivered to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that have unusual features. The first, in order to accommodate an unusual optical telescope testbed payload, uses a strut geometry and strut lengths that are non-standard. The second was design and tested to low temperatures (100 K) for use in a cryogenic test facility. Both hexapods incorporate standard software user interfaces.