In the article “Astrobee Will Find Astronauts Lost Socks” (Ackerman, 2021), NASA intends to establish a permanent space station called Gateway. Gateway will serve as a transiting point for astronauts who are heading towards Mars. As Gateway is expected to be unoccupied for long periods of time, robots will be utilised to maintain and ensure the viability of Gateway for astronauts. This includes keeping Gateway clean and safe. To do so, NASA has included a battery of tests for prototype robots such as testing their capacity to identify and remove obstacles via signals from computer vision, discern localised areas of the station and engineering communication between them. These tests are part of NASA’s long-term goal to integrate prevailing autonomous systems of the space station and robots to be fully functional without human interventions. In essence, the robots have to effectively respond and react to the signals sent out by the autonomous systems. One such robot that was tested - Bumble, poses a problem for manoeuvring around the station due to its limited mobility. Nevertheless, NASA is considering other commissioned robots such as Robonaut 2 and GITAI’s arm to go aboard Gateway.
190 words
No comments:
Post a Comment