Slashdot Mirror
'Robonaut' Designed To Perform Spacewalk
Adam Blake writes "CNN reports that NASA has designed a robotic spacewalker called the Robonaut which will perform satellite repairs and other duties typically performed by spacewalking astronauts. It is controlled remotely via a virtual reality interface and bears a small, apparently
'coincidental' resemblance (in the face) to intergalactic bounty
hunter Boba Fett."
I don't know if he'd object either, but that's the problem - neither does NASA. It'd probably be fine, but George's lawyers would get to it first, and they'd have a heyday if NASA actually said they were making a Boba Fett robot - especially since it sounds like Boba Fett will be returning for Episode II. Of course, it'd be great publicity, but there's still a chance that NASA would face negative repercussions - they might have to redesign it to make it look different, and if this really is the best design.....
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I would think latency would be a bigger issue....?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Alternately, the engineers know better than to tell the PR people what it looks like, so of course the PR people assume it's coincidental, since the resemblance to Boba Fett wasn't documented anywhere.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
>I agree, the chance that it's just a coincidence
>is minimal, but without George Lucas' approval,
>they have to say it's coincidental.
I don't know if he'll object at all. It's not ripping of any names (unlike a Certain Handheld Device For A Certain Large Military Organization That Shall Remain Nameless), it's a non-commercial project, and it's for peaceful purposes. I have no idea of what Lucas' morals are, but I don't think he'll object to this.
But yeah, the resemblance is pretty close. If you're right, not telling the PR folks anything was a good move. Smart folks in NASA's engineering corps...
The reusable shuttlecraft for now (in fact everything is reusable except for the big orange tank which fuels the shuttle burners; the two white O2 containers are picked up and reused) and in the future something that will be competley reusuable except for the fuel cost.
Those aren't O2 containers. The big orange tank contains both liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The two white things are solid rocket boosters.
What the heck is NASA thinking? Why hasn't this been developed. They should be ashamed for being beaten by David Hasselhoff.
Look, if I'm going to be spending MY money out of MY own pocket I want some cooler robots. I know some people think Boba Fett is pretty cool, but damn, imagine an R2-D2, or Han Solo. Heck, even a Chewbacca would be cooler. Imagine seeing his fur burning on re-entry...
I just wanted to say I feel honored by all the technical information ;) Call me a troll (and I just find it amusing) not one comment was made on the point of what I was saying but on my misinformation (sysadmin's don't know all ;) and all redundant at that! Hehe, I guess I'm happy people are reading my posts! Have a great night all, DranoK
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
IANASWG but I'd say Boba Fett was more "interstellar".
But then, I'm just a picky git who's probably wrong. As this is slashdot, I'm sure I will be corrected by the time I depress the Submit button.
Is it just me, or did they get the proportion of Boba Fett's head to his body wrong? Must be a unit conversion error or something.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
The lag is pretty bad, as you would know if you've examined satellite internet connections lately. Most likely, it'll be controlled by an astronaut sitting inside the shuttle rather than from the ground.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Does anyone know how much bandwidth can be achieved between the Shuttle and earth, you could conrtol this from a control center.
I was mostly thinking about the interface, that would be so cool because if you were floating and controling a VR unit that was floating it would probably be pretty easy.
Most VR units suck becuase you have outside forces that don't go with what you are looking at.(in my experiance at Epcot and such.)
Offtopic
About the macs in space article a while back, the Eros mission was being run by a modified Apple Power Mac 9500.
...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
What happens to all the astronauts who have trained for many years of their life to do this type of stuff safely, if a robot suddenly comes along? I expect the robot will probably break down occasionally, and so will need repairing by a human hand, but still - those guys have invested a lot in their future and it seems like they could likely loose a lot of their necessity when (if) robots come onto the market.
By the way - anyone know how they evaluate this kind of technology? Take prototypes up with them in the shuttle and see how they work or is there a cheaper way of doing it?
-Evo.
Soon, NASA will develop satellites with AI that will be delivered in the shuttle, but the astronauts will have to convince it to come out.
This robot does not have the ability to operate on it's own. The optimal interface to control such a robot would be telepresence. Telepresense hooks up a human operator with a head set and sensors to track arm, hand and body movement from the torso up. By keeping the robot's dimensions and range of motion the same as the human operator, the operator is able to control the robot with greater precision and with less training.
odd. I thought the big orange tank contained tang. :)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
odd. I thought Boba Fett was a Mandalorian guy.
There are a couple of reasons why using a five-fingered, human sized configuration makes good sense.
As Lister of Smeg mentioned, it allows for more intuitive control of the robot using VR glove type interfaces.
However, there is a more important reason: if its roughly the same size and configuration of a normal human (in terms of hands, etc), then it should be capable of using and manipulating standard tools. This way only one set of tools needs to be taken up into space - rather than having to take a set designed for human and a set designed for robotic use. The Honda Humanoid Robot was designed with this concept in mind.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
The justification is that the anthropomorphic design provides a more intuitive control. I actually don't think having five fingers is that bad but making the robot look like a human seems kind of pointless. I would think you could still get intuitive control with a more skeletal, simpler (read: easier to produce and maintain) design.
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." (W. Edwards Deming)
The likeness between Robonaut and 'Star Wars' bounty hunter Boba Fett is strictly a coincidence, NASA said
Sure...
===
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Their managers probably don't want to admit it was intentional because they're worried about a lawsuit and/or getting their monkeys spanked. Remember "project Sagan," later known as "Butt-head Astronomer?"
and give it the personality of EV-9D9?
----------- destroy evil immediately!
Just as a minor aside, the two side containers are not for O2, they are actually solid rocket boosters. The LOX is in the large external tank with the liquid hydrogen (the external tank is divided into multiple subtanks). If the side boosters had been merely O2 containers, Challenger wouldn't have gone boom...
jim nutt
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
What i really need is something that wont complain about smells .. so that it can do my dirty laundry
-=[the machine masters the grim and the dumb]=-
Early today, at great taxpayer expense, NASA issued a recall, in order to remove a back-mounted, launchable bright red missile from the robot. A NASA spokesman cited "concerned parents" as the reason.
Uh, no. Think of the boring ol' robots they use to make cars. These are replaced every few years as the parts wear out. They aren't always as cost-effective as you might like.
Now for space exploration, robots are really good. Consider the Apollo mission. Most of the payload was just stuff to keep three people alive in a completely hostile environment. Robots just need electricity.
Who fixed it when it breaks down in space? :)
EOT
Daaaaaaa.. Daaaaaaa DAAAAAAAA DEEE-Daaaa..... BOng, Bong, BOng, Bong, BOng, Bong, BOng, Bong....
I think all space robots should first have to win a gold medal in the Robot Wars (http://www.robotwars.com/)
-Effendi
-Effendi
Well, it looks damn scary to me. It scared my children too. It looks like something Asimov had drawn on the covers of his books.
Please fix it's scaryness.
It would take ~2 seconds for data to earth and ~2 second to get instructions to orbit.
So lagtime would be 2-5 seconds, no matter bandwith, so it would be impossible to control the robot from earth as smallest mistake might take you from estimated course.
We assume that information is transferred at the speed of light.
Of course it could be done with heavy precalculated courses, but then VR would be useless.
Bandwith increases amount of information transferred, but it still has to travel to destination.
Parents Against Kuro5hin
It's the ROBonaut! He even has five fingers so he could post articles to /. from space. The possibilities are endless. I can't wait for the upcoming partner robot, Maldanaut!
I actually don't think having five fingers is that bad but making the robot look like a human seems kind of pointless.
They should make it look like Natalie Portman.
When people think NASA, they think men in space. It is in many ways a waste of money to put people in space, but that is what congressmen want and therefore that is what we get. For each billion NASA spends on the space shuttle, we get a billion or so to do actuall science.
:)
This robot will be able to fix satellites that humans can't because the space shuttle can't reach a high enough orbit to get to many of them. Plus the robot needs no food o2 etc. And a one space shuttle mission costs many times the amount a simple satellite costs. Even though we really don't need them, there will probably continue to be humans in space for quiet a while to come. Not that I can't blame them -- I would LOVE to go to space for no scientific reason as well
Maybe it IS Bobba Fett?
But seriously, this is a cool project. Eventually 3D games might become a little more real by a company that does something like this. Maybe something like a real-life MechWarrior? I know I'd like to play with big, big robots like that...
Hmmm..this site, specifically the page about the head claims that "the design was inspired by Centurian armor, giving Robonaut some attitude."
Still looks more like Boba Fett to me...
nal 11
Granted, five-finger dexterity is impressive (how else could a robot flip someone the bird?), but for the tasks which this thing is supposed to accomplish, wouldn't a claw be cheaper/lower maintenance/logical?
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I know this will probably get super modded down, but...
Is it me or is NASA spending an inordinate amount of time promoting itself. I watch the news in the morning and it is amazing how often NASA comes up. Not to mention slashdot.
Now I find space exploration interesting, but NASA is putting out more PR than big corporations. Ever seen a copy of NASA Tech Briefs...pure fluff almost.
For instance, this article really didn't contain much information. This probably has been sitting on the NASA website for months and no one picked it up there.
One more instance of this type of thing, I have seen NASA divisons at conferences renting booths beside Corporations in the industrial exhibits. How is this legal? I don't want NASA to be spending my taxpayer money on PR.
We're not interested in operating the Universe by VR remote-control. We want to get our physical DNA out there, soon, and in quantity. Earth orbit isn't much of a destination. We need to set our sights considerably higher.
...the two white O2 containers are picked up and reused) and in the future something that will be competley reusuable except for the fuel cos
Those aren't O2 tanks they are solid fuel rocket boosters, most of the thrust comes from those puppies.
Once you light those they stay lit until they are exhausted.
FART!
::Slashapp(Slashdot) setup. How many hits can it take? Can it really keep up with IIS/WinBLOZE 2000!
I'm not trolling, i'm performing an advanced test of The VIA Athlon/700 Beowulfed mySQL DBI IGK ||
It's so I can determine if Open Source is really secure or not, and whether my PHB will understand LInox! Ha ha! Where's the roach from USER FRIENDLY when you need him to take care of my cretin boss! Get your lightsabers! We're ALL SO FUCKING RELEVANT.
What a crazy fun slashdot life!
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
The site is Slashdotted. Google cache is here.
-qbasicprogrammer
10 LIST : REM MER : TSIL 01
..it runs QBasic?
10 LIST : REM MER : TSIL 01
Now about this stopy: I think that this is a good thing, but I sure hope that they can learn to control the robost better than they can control the mars lander. Granted they could not have a visual on the mars lander, and there were other issues there.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
NASA has always come up under-funded after the huge budget to get to the moon (well, yee-haw lot's of good things came from that!) Politicians admit there's tons of good that came from NASA (lots of small technologies, including small computers) but the budget seems to be far too high for them to handle.
NASA has constantly been working on ways to cut costs. The reusable shuttlecraft for now (in fact everything is reusable except for the big orange tank which fuels the shuttle burners; the two white O2 containers are picked up and reused) and in the future something that will be competley reusuable except for the fuel cost. Which leaves the larger expenses of space exploration of 1) the price to hire, train, continue to pay astronauts capable of operating in such adverse conditions, and 2) the huge consideration for saftey (and price!) to warrent a space-walk.
Robots are a pay-once type of deal; you don't need to pay again unless they break. And you don't have to worry about their saftey during a spacewalk exercise. Eventually, what if for a basic maintenance voyage no human need go along at all? Thing about how dratsically that would cut the cost of a mission.
Hope NASA sees the future potential of this project...
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Once again, technology rushes ahead leaving the worker in a perilous situation. These robots are stealing jobs away from hardworking American astronauts! "Workers of, er, the World Unite!" Do you think United Auto Workers would take astronauts?
You are right. I shouldn't post at 3 AM :-)
I think what I meant was that controlling the robot would be kind of easy and natural, mimicing the movements and limits of a human upper torso. A 'naut could get proficient in a short period of time, thus implying a very steep learning curve of a few basic operations.
Thats opposed to some incredibly complex control systems I've seen, which tried to do too many things in a non-intuitive way. Creeping featurism out of control, and a rabid marketing team pushing the monstrosity out the door. Go read risks for some nightmarish ideas.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
What is so useful about having a space worker robot have a basically humanoid form? I would think that more arms or a variable number and more "eyes" could be advantageous. What is with the torso and neck? How are these shapes useful or preferable for the jobs at hand?
Otherwise, IT IS ABOUT TIME! Sending fragile humans to space to do minor repairs is unnecessarily dangerous and expensive. It is about time we notice our cyber creations are more suited to space than ourselves and made more use of this fact.
Robonaut will look like Boba Fett but have the logical and physical capacities of the great IG-88! This will be an unstoppable bounty hunter! Er, that is, I mean, space-walking robot, yeah that's the ticket.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Telepresence is a technology which might have big impacts on everyday life, and we already have most of the knowledge to make it real.
On the other hand, most employers will consider a man cheaper and more expendable than very expensive hardware. ... Just think of the Internet.
Technology is useless in the hands of a wrong culture
Ciao
----
FB
The motivation for this work is that the International Space Station requires too much EVA activity just for its routine maintenance. NASA is trying to find a less risky way of doing the more routine stuff.
having no intelligence of it's own, it is no more a 'robot' than a bulldozer, controlled by a remote...
virtual reality? oh please, give me a break...
how to get publicity and funding: build a 1950s-sci-fi-style remote controlled mechanic toy in the shape of human body and call it a robot. then throw in a few passé catch-phrases like 'virtual reality' or 'fractal automata' or 'nano'-whatever...
Robin Williams was at least funny...
"Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." -- Paul Graham
This looks like a great design. Nothing too radical to confuse astronauts controlling it. Learning curve should be fairly shallow.
:-)
:-)
But it could benefit by adding a couple of arms designed for a limited grasp and hold function. An operator could position one of these extra arm to hold an object in place, hit a freeze button, then go back to using the two prehensile arms.
I wish I had one of these for work around the house. So many times I wished I could have 4 or 5 arms to get a quick and dirty job done
the AC
And are we forgetting the chainsaw and BFG hand attachments, sold separately
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Oh I can't wait to see the first time the astronats use it for some silly prank, and they will its great PR. Here are some possibilities:
"Who's piloting the shuttle!?!"
A close up of a robot arm putting a human hand in warm water.
"Who's been in the bathroom for so damn long?!"
The first outer space robot human back massage.
A very synchronized dance routine when NASA springs for 2 of these.
Subsystems
Hand| Arms| Head| Controls| Avionics| Telepresence|
Videos (.AVI)
Hand (5.3 M)| Telepresenc e (3.3 M)| Arm motion (2.9 M)| Grasping (2.1 M)| Tether hook (1.9 M)| Velcro (2.7 M)|
Tools
Analysis tools| Software development | Telepresence Laboratory
___
I remember when the arms outside the spacecraft were supposedly going to be controlled by VR. Does anybody know if this ever really came to be? It would seem to me, that precision is much better with a multiview interface. You can always misjudge distance with VR, but multiple viewing (like in high school drafting class, kids) forces you to look at the actual orientation. Just a thought.
On a side note, applications like this are one of the few areas that I see vr interfaces as being truly useful. I don't really see the point of VR chatting, it's fun for games, OS's that use it make little to no sense to me however. I think that sometimes, VR is a solution looking for a problem. A neet glossy toy that everyone wants to take credit for being the first to do something truly useful with it. There is SOME serious research, but the majority of it seems to be the fluffy and filler and eyecandy of computer science (not that I don't love every tasty morsel).
Eh...
I work for one of the contractors on the Robonaut project. It's coming along nicely, with more automation of repetitious tasks and intelligent responses to failures (such as lost communication) planned for the next few years. Here's some more information.
http://vesuvius.jsc. nasa.gov/er_er/html/robonaut/robonaut.html
___