Yahoo – AFP,
Jo Biddle, September 8, 2015
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| The blue-and-white Interact Centaur fibreglass robot, which cost less than 200,000 euros ($224,000) to build, has a camera on its head which allows the controller to directly see the task it is performing (AFP Photo/Jo Biddle) |
Noordwijk
(Netherlands) (AFP) - European experts have pulled off a major advance that
might one day help build new worlds in space after an astronaut in the
International Space Station remotely guided a robot on Earth by feel.
Danish
astronaut Andreas Mogensen performed the breath-taking experiment in which he
placed a peg into a very tight hole on Monday under the careful control of the
European Space Agency.
While
orbiting some 400 kilometres (250 miles) above Earth, Mogensen took control of
the Interact Centaur rover which has a pair of arms for delicate,
high-precision work.
The
blue-and-white fibreglass robot, which cost less than 200,000 euros ($224,000)
to build, also has a camera on its head which allows the controller to directly
see the task it is performing.
But sight
is not the most important sense in this project. It is touch.
In
real-time, thanks to super swift signals bouncing off a dedicated complex
system of satellites working in synchronisation, the astronaut manoeuvered the
robot into place.
He then
very slowly lowered a metal pin held by the robot into a tight hole in a task
board with less than a sixth of a millimetre of wriggle room.
Using a
joystick
For the
first time -- thanks to force-feedback technology -- when the pin was not
aligned correctly Mogensen felt it hit the sides of the hole via the joystick
he was operating on the space station.
Cheers
erupted when after several long nail-biting minutes the rover -- which slightly
resembles Disney's WALL.E cartoon character -- dropped the pin successfully
into place.
Scientists
and engineers believe applications of this kind of tactile technology are huge
-- allowing humans to guide robots in delicate tasks by feeling their way.
The
technology will allow people "to project a human-like presence into the robots,
to do human-like tasks on the surface" of a planet, Andre Schiele, head of
ESA's Telerobotics and Haptics Laboratory, told AFP.
With space
engineers hoping at some point to fly people to Mars, "we have to bring
them back" which means before they first step foot on the planet "you
would have to build an entire launch-platform on the planet."
Robots like
the Centaur -- also affectionately dubbed the "blue bug" by some of
its designers -- could be put in place first to do the building.
"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," said industrial designer Emiel den Exter.
The
18-month project was a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA)and
students from Delft University of Technology.
"Even
something like lacing your shoe is something you rely entirely on your tactile
senses" for, Schiele told journalists gathered at the ESA headquarters in the
Dutch town of Noordwijk.
Earthly
uses
On Earth
this cutting-edge technology known as haptics could also be used
"everywhere where you basically don't want to send humans," said
Schiele.
"Feeling"
robots would have been useful to cap the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, or help
seal the reactors at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011
meltdown.
Professor
Frans van der Helm, from Delft University's mechanical engineering unit, said
one scheme was looking at using such robots to work in a massive nuclear fusion
project in France.
Inside the
costly, multipartner International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) --
if it is built -- "the heat will be about one million degrees," Van
der Helm told AFP.
"So
everything starts to deform" making it hard for robots to complete a task
which they have been programmed for, he said.
In this
case, telepresence technology would allow a human to feel their way through and
fix a problem.
For
27-year-old Turkish student Doga Emirdag, who helped design the Centaur's
exo-skeleton as part of his masters degree, Monday's demonstration was a big
day.
"The
robot as it is wouldn't go into space. But the technology being developed will
go to space," he said with a broad smile.
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