NASA auditions robots for lunar missions

Arizona’s famous Meteor Crater is a long way from the Moon. But for a menagerie of intelligent robots hoping to earn supporting roles in NASA’s lunar exploration plans, the massive impact crater west of Flagstaff is center stage.

In September, several such robots and an autonomous Moon buggy called Scout were put through their paces in the rough desert terrain. During a two-week campaign conducted by NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies team — a collection of government, university and industry scientists and engineers known as the Desert Rats — the robots demonstrated their ability to work side-by-side with space-suited researchers, helping with the kinds of tasks that actual astronauts will have to perform as they begin exploring the Moon and establishing outposts.

NASA’s current expenditure on so-called robotic field assistants is fairly modest. Of the $3 billion NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate spent this year developing a new space transportation system and preparing for an eventual return to the Moon, only $13 million went to Human Robotics Systems, a recently established program meant to focus the agency’s investment in robotic helpmates.

Chris Culbert, the NASA Johnson Space Center engineer in charge of the Human Robotic Systems program, said his current stable of prototype field assistants consists almost entirely of robots inherited from various programs around the agency, some of which pre-dated President George W. Bush’s 2004 call for the United States to return to the Moon.

“There’s not enough money in this program and it hasn’t been around long enough to build up new robots,” Culbert said.

In addition to Scout, NASA’s current line up of field assistants includes a nimble six-legged rover called Athlete, a dexterous humanoid torso on wheels called Centaur, and K-10, a boxy little rover specially equipped for site survey work.

Culbert said all four robots help NASA in one way or another to address the three big themes of the Human Robotics Systems program: surface mobility, surface handling, and human-systems interaction.

NASA Centaur is a wheeled robot with a humanoid torso developed by NASA.

“The interaction between robots and humans is very important to me,” Culbert said. “Industrial robots are typically behind barriers and big alarms ring if humans come within 10 feet. Our robots live with the humans.”

Athlete and Centaur, two of the robots that were used at Meteor Crater this fall, will be on display and demonstrated at NASA’s 2nd Exploration Conference being held Dec. 4-6 in Houston.

When Centaur rolls into the exhibit hall at the George C. Brown Convention Center, it will be a sort of homecoming for the wheeled robot’s humanoid half, a skilled construction worker formerly known as Robonaut. NASA originally developed Robonaut with an eye toward helping astronauts with tedious tasks like those they were encountering assembling the international space station. At the 2002 World Space Congress in Houston, a stationary Robonaut was on exhibit showing off its dexterity with hand tools. NASA officials present there talked about how Robonaut could one day help assemble very large aperture space telescopes in orbit.

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