  An autonomous system is presented to solve the problem of in space assembly,
which can be used to further the NASA goal of deep space exploration. Of
particular interest is the assembly of large truss structures, which requires
precise and dexterous movement in a changing environment. A prototype of an
autonomous manipulator called "Assemblers" was fabricated from an aggregation
of Stewart Platform robots for the purpose of researching autonomous in space
assembly capabilities. The forward kinematics for an Assembler is described by
the set of translations and rotation angles for each component Stewart
Platform, from which the position and orientation of the end effector are
simple to calculate. However, selecting inverse kinematic poses, defined by the
translations and rotation angles, for the Assembler requires coordination
between each Stewart Platform and is an underconstrained non-linear
optimization problem. For assembly tasks, it is ideal that the pose selected
has the least sensitivity to disturbances possible. A method of sensitivity
reduction is proposed by minimizing the Frobenius Norm (FN) of the Jacobian for
the forward kinematics. The effectiveness of the FN method will be demonstrated
through a Monte Carlo simulation method to model random motion internal to the
structure.
