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NASA Outlines Plan For Next-Gen Space Robots
CWmike writes "Imagine a team of robots — some rolling on wheels, some walking on two legs — working alongside astronauts on the surface of Mars, scouting previously unseen locations, measuring the parameters of a new base or constructing a building. Now picture astronauts driving across the Martian surface in a vehicle. When the astronauts get out and begin their work, they can flip a switch to turn the vehicle into an autonomous robot that goes off to undertake projects on the planet. Whatever work the next generation of NASA-developed space robots does, it will be done in conjunction with their human counterparts. Terry Fong, director of NASA's intelligent robotics group, said that's the image that a lot of the US space agency's engineers have in mind as they work on the new robotic rovers. In comparison, the Mars rovers on the Red Planet have been working alone for years. 'We're working on a new use of these robots — robots to support human exploration,' Fong said. 'NASA is now thinking, "How do you go about sending humans to the moon or Mars or elsewhere? How can you use the combination of humans and robots to do exploration better?" I think it's a really, really fundamentally different approach.' Fong said he's hopeful that the next-generation robotic rovers will arrive on the moon or on an asteroid within five to 10 years."
http://www.theonion.com/articles/mars-rover-beginning-to-hate-mars,2072/
I'm not sure I would want to flip a switch and have my only means of returning to the landing craft drive away autonomously. It would be HAL on wheels.
Why don't we just wait for the space robots to find us?
Aren't we going to be relying upon other countries just to cart stuff and people to and from the ISS after the space shuttles hit the Smithsonian?
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
Imagine a team of robots -- some rolling on wheels, some walking on two legs...
People are obsessed with the idea of robots that look like we do. And in time, technology will get there. But it isn't necessarily the most efficient / practical / useful way to do it.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/darpas-robot-dog-project-03457/
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Will it be a knife wielding space robot?
For those of you to lazy to copy and paste.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain.
No, they will be fought with computers. And when the numbers are calculated, people on the appropriate side will be directed to the Death Chambers.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Imagine a team of robots — some rolling on wheels, some walking on two legs — working alongside astronauts on the surface of Mars" The problem is never NASA having great plans or imagination, the problem is soon they will be firing toy rockets from hobby shops and cashing all thier gov't checks at a Money Mart. Like my drunk friends at parties you really do have to hve a great imagination to see them going anywhere. NASA needs to set reasonable, affordable goals based on thier budget, and then follow through.
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"When the astronauts get out and begin their work, they can flip a switch to turn the vehicle into an autonomous robot that goes off to undertake projects on the planet." Hopefully, not the kind of projects which might leave the astronauts stranded.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
In the midst of our determination to outsource or automate any job of our society, including sex, what makes anyone think that Obama's privatization of space will lead to putting a 'man' anywhere in space? Who could build a case for the added cost of sending a human through at least 50 million miles of space and back again, when a machine will be able to do it at 1/100th the cost and, BTW, does not necessarily need to return? By the projected time of sending a 'man' to Mars, machines will be capable of doing more than a human astronaut in a phone-booth size space suit. Sure, they will not have the wisdom and judgment of a human, but how has that wisdom helped us with things like the economy or programming a VCR (I date myself)?
Let me know if I'm way off base here, but once we have humans on site, why do we need robots? The robots we sent did some good work in their years of operation, but nothing humans couldn't have done in a tiny fraction of the time. Given that we happen to be the absolute best tool users ever to exist (and by a large margin), why not save tons of weight and just ship tools instead? In order to have this magical vehicle/robot (I like to call them "autobots") do anything real, we need a human making decisions. So that's either someone on Earth doing the whole lightspeed back-and-forth thing, or a human on Mars giving fast commands, but ending up doing no better than if he were actually on-site doing it himself. I guess the keyword there is "autonomous". I get that. So now you need to build all that intelligence and ability into the vehicle, do it for less weight than simply bringing another human, and make it just as flexible in its capabilities so you didn't just commit a unitasker to Mars for a couple years.
Nerd Rock In Progress
This sounds like a recipe for turning the humans into maintenance and support staff for the robots.
It seems to me that every time man has developed such devices 4 or 5 times as many people who used to do the work are now employed supporting the device that does the actual work.
A human needs food and shelter and science tools. A team of robot + humans needs all that plus a maintenance shop, additional technicians, spare parts, operations specialists to manage the robots when on-missions.
A dumb transport might require some of these, but a "smart" transport will require more.
We just barely are able to get a car to run a course with no on board humans, but the staff behind this project vastly exceeds the cost of hiring a driver. And the car still can't go half the places a driven car could.
In short, this is a human resource sponge. It would be easier and less costly and require fewer humans to do this sort of science with humans than doing it with semi autonomous robots.
And unlike flying Predator drones on the other side of the planet from an air conditioned office in Nevada, signal delay would require on-mars remote operations staff for anything more sophisticated than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
Oh, and Send my only transportation off on some scouting mission while I take core samples in some remote ravine far from my base? I don't think so.
Besides AMEE Freaks me Out.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1. These are not the droids you are looking for.
2. Why do they call them "terminators"?
3. ???
4. Profit
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This is how the sequel to "Dude, where's my car?" begins.
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
A manned mission gets simpler and cheaper if it doesn't have to go in and out of the Martian gravity well. Land the tele-operated machines on a one-way trip, keep the human operators in orbit. No life-support mass to lift off the surface, no fuel mass to lift the life-support mass off the surface, no deadweight mass of rocketry to lift both off the surface (and accelerate them to escape velocity!), all of which need to be multiplied by lots and lots to get the total launch pad mass on Earth.
"How can you use the combination of humans and robots to do exploration better?"
Using only robots.
We don't yet know of any planets or other worlds that are not totally toxic to humans. Sure, we can build spacesuits and space craft to support humans to do these things. But machines can go these places and do these things. We have to start somewhere, robots today lead to the robots of tomorrow. We don't just start out with iRobot. We build robots with incremental technological advances until we get to iRobot.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
For those of you too lazy to type that extra "o".
they don't call it Aimee....
An article about NASA where no celebrity is mentioned? Preposterous. I suggest Will Smith, since he's an acknowledged expert on robotics.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A better idea would be sending up robots to our Moon and having them build out habitats. When we get around to sending some people up there, they can just walk in to the new buildings and yell, "Lucy, I'm home!"
Obligatory HGG quote: Why stop now, just when I'm hating it?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Something like this? Robots and Humans: Synergy in Planetary Exploration (2003)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
we use those resources to send a robot 5,000 feet to do something about deep water oil well malfunctions before we send them 5 million miles to do nothing of benefit for Earth.
Hope is the currency of fools
Aside from the obvious fascination with anthropomorphic robots, the idea of smarter, semi-autonomous devices is attractive. Astronaut goes out of the lander/base, and deploys two or three bots with science experiments. They sit there and run, perhaps moving their arms/probes, and shifting their solar panels to follow the sun. The bots could be remote driven back to base, to be refitted. Need to upgrade firmware, or swap out spectrometers? No prob for the astronaut, who is on-site. No more Spirit stuck in a sand trap. The possibilities for augmenting the science to be done -- human PLUS next-gen bots -- is a win-win.
without those bloody astronauts
From what I've read, there are lots of humans in NASA that would be willing to sign up for a one way trip to Mars. Maybe we should be considering this option a little more seriously.
Actually, the most practical vision is the reverse: humans to support robot exploration of space. The main reason to send humans into space is simply to expand the range of our species beyond our planet. Not because we're better than robots in exploring and exploiting space, but because human achievement is the reason for even robots in space. And if we're to inspire humans on Earth to achieve, to include space as part of our "world", we need humans in space - even if we're just along for the ride.
Where humans exceed robots is in our flexibility and adaptability. Robots will get into trouble in space, trouble that robots can't always get them out of. Humans alongside them, or at least up there closer to them, can troubleshoot and devise new uses and missions for the robots. That kind of work justifies having humans working there.
Humans and robots are complementary in space. We should think of our role as making the robots do their job better. Which the robots can see as their expanding our human activities out there.
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make install -not war
Why insist on 2-legged robots?!? 6-legged robots are a lot more stable; e.g. they can withstand a power failure without falling over. If you've got a task that really demands 2-legged capabilities, perhaps you could get one of the fucking astronauts to do it!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'd encourage young people interested in robotics to stay away from NASA. NASA's record (as opposed to JPL's) is not good. NASA has spent vast amounts of money on space robots like the Flight Telerobotic Servicer without much success. Most of NASA's stuff is really teleoperators. And NASA projects take decades.
Exciting work in robotics is happening. Look at what Willow Garage, Anybots, Festo, and Boston Dynamics are doing. That leaking oil well out in the Gulf is being fixed by teleoperated robots: "Robots position giant box over oil-spewing well" DoD has over 20,000 mobile robots now. NASA only has a few one-offs.
1. Start an open source project to write an auotmous Surveyor/Miner/Constructor Robot(S) control software.
2. Start Paypal account to collect donations to pay for materials for construction and launch fees
3. Wait 5yrs. Visit Moon Base!
We have insufficient vespene gas!
Space robots were the only thing funny that came from Lowtax, and NASA is remaking it... ...well, maybe the only funny thing other than being beaten up by Uwe Boll. NASA can't be beaten up by Uwe Boll, can it?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It is only a matter of time...