Astronaut Controls Robot From Space — One Day, It Could Help Build Our Home On Mars [Video]
From a height of 250 miles above Earth, a Danish astronaut has done something incredible: he controlled an Earthbound robot, feeling its every move in a breakthrough moment that could have fascinating implications for space exploration.
The astronaut is Andreas Mogensen, and the robot he controlled is called the Interact Centaur rover — lovingly called the “blue bug,” Agence-France Presse reported. It’s outfitted with a camera and has a pair of arms designed for high-precision work, controlled by the astronaut.
From aboard the International Space Station, Andreas moved those arms with a joystick, in real time.
As a system of satellites synchronized, the astronaut and robot had to place a pin inside a very small hole in a task board. According to IGN, Andreas had a one-second time delay — ISS signaled the Centaur and back again, via a ground station in New Mexico, NASA in Houston, and a transatlantic cable.
Astronaut at the International Space Station remotely controls a robot on Earth http://t.co/R3Bs8lgvWR pic.twitter.com/F1zmsxBnPB
— Yahoo (@Yahoo) September 8, 2015
An astronaut has successfully controlled a robot on Earth with micrometer precision http://t.co/SCWuC0aI4m pic.twitter.com/5uru6RXx6G
— WIRED UK (@WiredUK) September 8, 2015
The coolest aspect of this experiment was the fact that Mogensen could actually feel what the “blue bug” felt as he used his joystick to guide its arms. This phenomenon was possible due to something called force-feedback technology, which allowed the astronaut to feel when the arms met resistance.
In other words, when the pin was in the wrong place, the astronaut felt it hit the hole’s sides.
The implications for the future are incredible. Scientists believe that the Interact Centaur could help humans build structures from Earth on Mars, for example. According to the European Space Agency’s Andre Schiele, the robot will let people “project a human-like presence into the robots, to do human-like tasks on the surface” of a planet.
As we begin to envision and make plans for a colony on Mars, it’ll be necessary, at some point, to get the planet ready for our arrival. For example, we’ll need to “build an entire launch-platform on the planet” that will make sure the first Mars colonists will be able to get back to Earth — before they even leave home.
Since this experiment proves that the Centaur can be controlled from ISS, scientists hope that the robot can be sent ahead of humans to Mars, and do some of this necessary building, said industrial designer Emiel den Exter.
“There’s going to be a need for a set-up, some building before a human even sets foot on the planet and for that we could send down robots and control them from a space station.”
But before humans turn their eyes to space colonization, there is a use for a human-controlled robot like the Centaur here at home, because they can be sent in “everywhere where you basically don’t want to send humans,” Schiele noted.
To start with, it could’ve been sent to Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 oil spill to cap the leak, or it would’ve proved useful in Fukushima to seal the reactors after the Japan tsunami and meltdown that followed. In both cases, humans could’ve controlled the robots from a safe distance.
[Photo Courtesy NASA / Getty Images]
