Intelligent Manipulation of Space Robots: Environmental Perception, Autonomous Decision-Making, and Dexterous Operations

Space robots are becoming indispensable for next-generation space missions, including on-orbit servicing, station maintenance, spacecraft inspection, debris removal, and planetary exploration. These missions require robots to operate in unattended, safety-critical, and highly uncertain space environments. Non-cooperative targets, complex contact conditions, changing illumination, communication delay, limited onboard resources, and microgravity-induced coupling impose major challenges on environmental perception, motion planning, and closed-loop control. These characteristics make traditional operation modes based on ground planning and predefined trajectories insufficient for demanding on-orbit tasks. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, learning-based control, multi-sensor fusion, and digital twin technology offer promising pathways toward autonomous, dexterous manipulation in space. This Research Topic focuses on intelligent manipulation technologies that integrate perception, decision-making, planning, and control to enable autonomous and dexterous operation of space robots.

This Research Topic aims to bring together cutting-edge research on the intelligent control of space robotic systems. We seek contributions that advance theoretical methods, algorithmic frameworks, system integration, and mission-oriented applications for space robots operating in complex and uncertain environments. Particular emphasis is placed on methods that enable space robots to perceive their surroundings reliably, reason about task objectives autonomously, interact safely with non-cooperative targets, and execute dexterous operations with high precision and robustness. The Topic also encourages studies that combine robotics, artificial intelligence, control theory, machine vision, tactile sensing, digital twins, and space mission engineering to improve the autonomy and operational capability of next-generation space robotic systems. By assembling contributions from robotics, artificial intelligence, perception, planning, and control, this Research Topic aims to promote the development of intelligent space robotic technologies for future orbital, lunar, planetary, and deep-space missions.

This Research Topic welcomes original research articles, reviews, and perspectives related to the intelligent operation and control of space robots. Submissions should demonstrate clear methodological innovation, technical significance, or convincing validation through simulations, hardware experiments, ground-based verification platforms, or mission-relevant case studies. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical frameworks and technical challenges of intelligent operation and control for space robots;
• Environmental perception and scene understanding for space robots;
• Autonomous task and motion planning in non-cooperative space environments;
• Intelligent collaborative planning for multi-branch robotic systems in complex space operations;
• Dexterous manipulation, grasping, capture, and assembly technologies in microgravity environments;
• Embodied intelligence architectures, multimodal foundation models, and learning algorithms for space robots;
• Deployment and real-time inference of lightweight neural networks on space-grade processors;
• Training methods, simulation platforms, and experimental testbeds for embodied intelligence in space robots;
• Intelligent control methods for shape-changing and reconfigurable space robots.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Space Robots; Environmental Perception; Autonomous Decision-Making; Intelligent Control; Dexterous Operations.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.