This summer season, a group of robots explored a simulated martian panorama in Germany, remotely guided by an astronaut aboard the Worldwide Area Station. This marked the fourth and last session of the Floor Avatar experiment, a collaboration between ESA and the German Aerospace Middle (DLR) to develop how astronauts can management robotic groups to carry out complicated duties on the Moon and Mars.
The session launched new ranges of autonomy and complexity. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim operated two robots – ESA’s four-legged Spot and DLR’s humanoid Rollin’ Justin – to retrieve scattered pattern containers and ship them to a lander. Spot navigated the terrain autonomously, whereas Justin was guided by means of a mixture of direct management and pre-set instructions. This setup allowed Jonny to delegate duties and concentrate on higher-level choices, constructing on different periods the place robots required full teleoperation.
In a second situation, ESA’s Work together rover transported DLR’s robotic canine Bert to a cave entrance. After eradicating a boulder, Jonny deployed Bert, which then simulated a malfunction in considered one of its legs. Jonny needed to retrain Bert’s strolling algorithm in actual time earlier than it continued into the cave and detected indicators of martian ice. This examined how operators reply to surprising challenges and adapt robotic methods on the fly.
The robots are managed from the Worldwide Area Station utilizing a custom-built interface developed by ESA and DLR, combining a joystick and a haptic-feedback system. The interface permits switching between first-person view for immersive teleoperation and a top-down map for broader mission oversight. This flexibility lets the astronaut handle a number of robots effectively, balancing direct management with strategic delegation.
Over 4 periods, the Floor Avatar group has refined its strategy to human-robot interplay, enhancing each teleoperation and activity delegation to autonomous methods. The experiment has additionally helped to determine which duties astronauts want to regulate immediately and which may be safely handed over to robotic methods, providing worthwhile perception for future mission planning.
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