Robotic Arms in Hangars...

[AlterionX]

Hello. I was wondering if for a mini project, it would be possible to make an arm that picks up drones or docked craft, and moves it somewhere else, kinda like an assembly line. That would be a very interesting project to do. Unfourtunately, I don't have the time right now to process exactly how to do it, but it might be interesting for interstation shuttles and all the other stuff. Though it would have to a pretty big hanger.

So imagine a station with two docked entities. One is kinda like a turret, and can rotate and stuff. The other is an actual ship. So now, say we wanted to move the ship to a separate track that is 90 degrees from the current track (different orientation, like xy to yz plane).

Now, we have the turret-like one connect to a specified area on the ship with the new contact-docking mechanism. This some how sends a signal to the bottom of the ship that undocks the ship from the station, so the ship is now docked on the turret-like object, which is docked on the station.

Now, the turret rotates does strange things, and somehow get the undocked portion of the ship to dock to the new plane on the station. This docking then sends a signal to undock from the turret arm thing.

Oh, wow I wrote alot. Anyway, if some one wants to try it, the basic plan is here... but I personally don't have the time to do this. I apparently had the time to type this all out, though.

 

[KiloZulu]

I think this ship review of the Burning Amber might interest you. It's too bad that Saber didn't have the time to fiddle with the controls more. I'd like to think that the probes on the ship can be reloaded, but he doesn't actually demonstrate it.

 

[Broomsage]

I don't know about using an arm, currently docking/undocking is a bit impractical, BUT you could move a docked entity around on a single plane. Make an enormous bed of rails, Link rails so you can change the direction of all at once. You can control the direction of anything that lands on the rails. The rails of course will keep going, so place stop points where you want them to stop.

I wont go into detail about how to have separate control of more than one docked entity or how to add more planes because you should be able to figure it out. Hope this helps!:D