Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: For decades, NASA has employed different operational approaches for human and robotic missions. Human spaceflight missions to the Moon and in low Earth orbit have relied upon near-continuous communication with minimal time delays. During these missions, astronauts and mission control communicate interactively to perform tasks and resolve problems in real-time. In contrast, deep-space robotic missions are designed for operations in the presence of significant communication delay - from tens of minutes to hours. Consequently, robotic missions typically employ meticulously scripted and validated command sequences that are intermittently uplinked to the robot for independent execution over long periods. Over the next few years, however, we will see increasing use of robots that blend these two operational approaches. These interactive exploration robots will be remotely operated by humans on Earth or from a spacecraft. These robots will be used to support astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), to conduct new missions to the Moon, and potentially to enable remote exploration of planetary surfaces in real-time. In this talk, I will discuss the technical challenges associated with building and operating robots in this manner, along with lessons learned from research conducted with the ISS and in the field.
Author: Terry Fong
Institution: Ames Research Center
Language: English
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2767081788