The Coming Age of Avatars for Space Exploration
"If every habitable world in the universe is unique, and the precise chemical conditions of a planet helps shape the life that evolves there, then avatars could allow aliens to visit other worlds from the safety of their spaceship. Could it be that all the stories of alien encounters on Earth were really encounters with alien avatars? Maybe aliens don't actually look like grey humanoids with large eyes and no noses. Instead, that haunting image may simply be what we look like to them."
Astrobiology Magazine
'Telerobotics' describes robotic exploration when human users are able to remotely control robots and perform science in risky locations such as the on the rocky surface of Mars or the toxic methane lakes of Saturn's Titan.
The suitability of robots for space missions is obvious: they're tough, they're precisely controllable, they don't sissy out and die without air and they can live for years on a battery. All the great big explorations recently - Mars, Enceladus, the Sun itself - have been conducted by our automated assistants while the wimpy humans potter around with their new garden shed in the back garden (aka "the ISS in orbit"). But machines (currently) have some negatives: first of all, they're not very smart. Signals can only move at light speed, so communications with the Rovers (for example) take eight minutes back and forth. They only program it once a day for safety's sake, so it's less "the ultimate RC car" and more "so carefully it makes chess Grandmasters look like skateboarding teenagers". By the time computer minds are smart enough to work out what to do by themselves, well, by that point we won't be telling them what to do anymore. We'll be asking if they could please send us back some data from where they go, and we'll be doing it politely.
Meanwhile, back to the present...The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are a prime example of how remote-controlled robots can expand our ability to explore beyond the Earth without putting humans at risk. The actions of the MER rovers are decided and controlled by a team of scientists on Earth who are able to see the martian terrain through the eyes of the rovers, determine the best routes for travel and objects for scientific investigations, and then send their commands back to the rovers.
Spaced-based telescopes, such as Hubble, are also controlled from Earth through telerobotics. Even the International Space Station has a telerobotic, two-armed manipulator named Dextre.
Telerobotics technology is at the core of the greatest of the ongoing debates in space exploration: the question of man vs. unmanned robotic missions.
NASA currently operates more than 50 robotic spacecraft that are studying Earth and reaching throughout the solar system, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond. Another 40 unmanned NASA missions are in development, and space agencies in Europe, Russia, Japan, India and China are running or building their own robotic craft.
"Tomorrow’s NASA space program will be different," says Wallace Fowler of the University of Texas, a renowned expert in modeling and design of spacecraft, and planetary exploration systems. "Human space flight beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), beyond Earth’s natural radiation shields (the Van Allen belts), is dangerous. Currently, a human being outside the Van Allen belts could receive the NASA defined “lifetime dose” of galactic cosmic radiation within 200 days. If the Sun spews out a coronal jet of radiation in a solar storm in the direction of the spacecraft, a lethal dose can be received in a few hours. Mars does not have the equivalent of the shielding Van Allen belts, so a Mars base would also need shielding. Until we develop appropriate shielding, probably an intense magnetic field around the spacecraft, human travel, even to the moon, will likely be limited."
"Robotic missions, in the short term, will be limited to the inner solar system," continues Fowler aruing the hard realities of manned space travel. "In the inner solar system (within the orbit of Mars), the solar cells can be used to power spacecraft. Beyond Mars, spacecraft power systems rely on radioactive means to create electricity, and we do not currently have a supply source for the needed material. There is a very short supply of Plutonium 238, the radioactive element used to provide electricity for spacecraft going to Jupiter and beyond. We have exhausted the U.S. supply and have been buying it from the Russians. Now they are in short supply and other sources are not currently available."
Robots, however, are a far cry from true Pandora-like avatars that allow the human user to truly 'experience' the environment. This is where virtual reality technologies come into play.
The Virtual Interactive Environment Workstation (VIEW) was an early virtual reality instrument developed at NASA Ames. It was a leap forward in true 'immersion' of the user in a virtual environment, and was the first systems to use a 'data glove'. This glove measured and tracked how a user moved their fingers, allowing interaction with the virtual world.
Today, NASA uses 3D and virtual technologies for a number of public outreach and education projects. The technology can also be used for training purposes, allowing an astronaut to practice, say, walking on the surface of mars. NASA is developing technologies that will allow a human explorer based on Earth, or in the relative safety of a space station or habitat, to actually experience exploration of a distant location. If the technology can be tied to robotic 'avatars' on a planetary surface in real-time, the user would not simply experience a simulation of the world - but could directly participate in exploration and science as if they were there.
Closer to the exploration front, similar technologies are also being used in NASA's most avatar-like experiment of all - the Robonaut. According to researchers on the project, "Robonaut systems are the first humanoids specifically designed for space."
Robonaut is a collaboration between the Robot Systems Technology Branch at the NASA Johnson Space Center and the US military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to build a robotic 'astronaut equivalent'. Robonaut looks a nit like a human, with an upper torso, two arms and a head - all controlled by a human operator through telerobotic technologies. Robonaut was designed with the concept of creating a robot for tasks that 'were not specifically designed for robots.' In order for the Robonaut to complete these 'human-like' tasks, it is equipped with hands that are actually more dexterous than those of an astronaut in a pressurized spacesuit.
In 2004, the second generation of Robonaut gained mobility when engineers attached its body to a Segway Robotic Mobility Platform (RMP) commissioned by DARPA. Using virtual reality instruments, a human operator was immersed in the Robonaut's actual environment and was able to perform remote operations.
More recently, NASA revealed the next generation of Robonaut, dubbed R2. General Motors has now joined on as a partner, and hopes that Robonaut will not only explore other worlds, but will help humans build safer cars. For more information on the R2 project, click here [link to the NASA/GM youtube site - or repost the videos on astrobio.net and link to that page] to see videos with some of the key researchers involved.
According to researchers on Robonaut, "As the project matures with increased feedback to the human operator, the Robonaut system will approach the handling and manipulation capabilities of a suited astronaut."
With more 'haptic technology' which uses sensory feedback to recreate the sense of touch, a user might wear gloves that allow them to 'feel' objects in a virtual world. You could examine the texture and weight of rocks, or even experience the crunch of icy martian dirt.
Dr Grace Augustine's Avatars on Pandora go well beyond current technologies. We're not going to be growing any biological avatars for human explorers in the lab - but modern robotics are getting close to providing a 'human' experience through increased dexterity and mobility. Robotic avatars could allow humans to fully experience the environment of other worlds. Through the eyes of robotic avatars we could watch the sunrise over the rusty, red crater rims without having to "experience suffocation, the icy death of -200 degrees C on their skin or the sting of microscopic dust in their eyes."
Even though NASA and others have come a long way in developing avatars, the technology still has a long way to go before we're having adventures on Pandora-like planets. Perhaps more advanced civilizations on distant worlds have developed avatars just as good as those in the movie.
Casey Kazan
Source credits: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Avatars_In_Space_999.html
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