Synchrokinetic Assemblers for Modular Construction in Microgravity

Synchrokinesis is a novel paradigm for simple, reversible, automation first assemblies. It consists of simultaneous displacing all the parts of an ensemble, each equipped with a directional connector, such as to eventually make them self-interlock, eliminating the need for fasteners. The resulting constructions are very robust to shocks and come in a variety of shapes and sizes - e.g. from simple cubic volumes to arbitrarily large arrays of tiles. This paper introduces five conceptual synchrokinetic assemblers designed for modular construction in microgravity environments, extending the principles of the translational assembly presented in.1 The purpose is to investigate the challenges and the potentials of the various assembly processes, which all have in common that they are based on Euclidean motions.