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NASA's Personal Satellite Assistants

Posted by michael on from the battlebots dept.

colonist writes "Wired News reports on the Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA), a spherical robot about the size of a softball that uses air jets to move in the microgravity environment of space vehicles and habitats. Described as a cross between Star Trek's tricorder and Star Wars' lightsaber training droid, the PSA has 'sensors for measuring gases, temperature, and air pressure' and performs 'video conferencing and can communicate with electronic support devices such as computer servers, avionics systems, and wireless LAN bridges'." We mentioned these a few years ago - looks like they've come a long way since then.

15 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Not weird. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If they played it up, congress would accuse them of being Commies, and make them make it run Windows, and frankly, I think we'd all rather have a rogue lightsaber training droid in our shuttle, than one of these guys running Windows.

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    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  2. strap a helium baloon to it! by w3weasel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    strap a helium baloon to it! why should space-men have all the fun toys!

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    Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy

    1. Re:strap a helium baloon to it! by Avian+visitor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      strap a helium baloon to it!

      I imagine you would need quite a large volume of helium to lift something like that.

      Did you ever try to hang something to that helium baloon you got for free at the fair? It can lift a piece of paper and not much more.

      Check this flying saucer. This big bag of helium can lift only a small battery, receiver and an electric motor. Strap a PDA to it, and you would probably need twice the volume.

      I guess you could do better if you used hydrogen, but then I don't think anyone would be confortable with a big bag of explosive gas automaticaly following him.

  3. Cost of Space Missions by artlu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If droids can replace mundane human tasks on space missions, then Nasa is doing very well to spend their money on these things. Just think of it as a droid automating the stupid tasks of checking environmental controls, or outside activity. pretty cool.

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    artlu.net
  4. Idea: by Paulrothrock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not put a small CO2 cartridge in it so that it could move through a space that has been depressurized? This would probably come in handy for, say, checking the status of a system after an accident.

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    I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
    1. Re:Idea: by Paulrothrock · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I meant inside the station. It's better than the poor thing wearing out its batteries spinning its fans in an airless environment, and safer than having the humans go in there.

      As for the airlock thing, I imagine the algorithm would go like this: 1)Wait for airlock door to open. 2) Enter airlock, 3) Move into position to exit airlock, 4)On depressurization, use CO2 jets to move out of airlock once egress door is open. Or you could have a human pilot it remotely, since it's already got a camera.

      Monitoring tank PSI and location (which I imagine it already does), you could make it so that you need to sudo anything that will put it somewhere it can't get back from. And timed bursts + a little math (for decreasing pressure in the tanks) = good enough control for emergencies.

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      I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
    2. Re:Idea: by Mondoz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The fans could still be used to orient the device. Spin a fan one direction, the device rotates in the other direction.

      This kind of gyroscopic attitude control has been used for years in zero-gravity environments.

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      /sig
  5. Reminds me... by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Of that thing from Flash Gordon the freezes anyone who tries to assasinate Ming.

    I saw these things at NASA's AMES research center a few years ago. The article says they could be in serivice within three years too. Very cool.

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    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  6. Sounds like a good idea but... by slusich · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In the cramped quarters of something like a space station, do you really want something else floating loose to run into?

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  7. Question... by teknokracy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do astronauts on the ISS have normal internet? Or are they just linked in an intranet and with NASA ground intranets....?

    1. Re:Question... by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I'm googling now. But I think it's links with a private network.

      An article in Space.com back in 2000 describes the ISS Crew as having email, but no Internet access. Email is pretty easy to spool up and delivered when the ISS is in communication range. Web access is another matter entirely. (Remember, it's traveling around the world every 90 minutes. It's constantly hopping between ground relay stations.)

      Even if they do have internet access today, they probably have to spool up the sites they want to see and cache them through a proxy/radio relay/whathaveyou.

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      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  8. Re:Friggin Lasers by gmletzkojr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But if this thing has a laser pointer attached to it, and it has the accuracy to point at the right button to press, why couldn't it just press the button itself and skip the astronauts?

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  9. Still just a pipe dream... by Mondoz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In order for this sort of thing to actually do the things it's described as being able to do, it's going to have to work and play well with the other systems onboard.

    One of the tools indicated on this device is an inventory scanner. Whomever is working on this project has yet to contact anyone in the inventory department about interfacing with the inventory software IMS (Inventory Management System) which uses its own barcode readers.

    This still has a long way to go before anyone sees them floating around any of the orbiting vehicles.

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  10. Shuttle defence! by JBMcB · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Put a couple larger models to tag along outside the Shuttle, or Mir, and tie them into shipboard millimeter RADAR. They can manouvre in between the ship and/or shuttle and absorb/deflect any micrometeors that fly by. They can double as outboard cameras to monitor the station (ala satellite of love :) or redundant comms relays. If there's too much intertia a few ounces of shaped-charge high explosives goes a long way.

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  11. Doin' the Locomotion by BCHodo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was looking at the conceptual model, and I noticed that the thruster arrangement only applies force in the x, y and z axes. There are no nozzles that allow pitch, yaw and roll. Then I looked at the testbed. It has thrusters in the x and y axes that would also allow yaw changes, but no z translation, and no pitch or roll. Now, maybe they were planning to use gyros in the final version, but that would seem to be an unnecessary complication. It might be easier to have thruster nozzles with small electrically controlled baffles to open and close the nozzles, and 1 or 2 internal fans to intake and exhaust air (in a pressurized environment) from/to the appropriate nozzle(s).

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