Remote Control: Robots on the Moon to Be Operated from Earth Soon

Curiosity and Perseverance have been proving for several years that machines can operate autonomously on a distant planet. The next step will be to remotely guide its rovers or robots from Earth!

This was announced by researchers from the robotics laboratory at the University of Bristol (Great Britain), and they published the results of their first tests of “tele-operation” of a rover. At the European Space Agency's (ESA) European Center for Space Applications and Telecommunications in Harwell, they managed to manipulate a robotic arm to extract a sample of fake lunar regolith.

At the heart of the Moonlight project

This telecommunications system eliminates the need for cameras, whose images can be delayed by about a second between the Earth and the Moon. To relay signals in real time between teleoperators on Earth and machines on the Moon, ESA plans to rely on the Moonlight project, this constellation of satellites placed around the star.

While we wait for men and women to land on the Moon, remotely piloted rovers could soon be working on the Moon, with human controllers on Earth remotely manipulating the rovers' tools. This would be particularly suitable for sampling, but also for drilling or assembly.

Using a virtual regolith model helps reduce costs.

photo credit: Joe Louca

Using a virtual regolith model helps reduce costs. Credit: Joe Louca

Haptic perception

Among the technological feats of this remote manipulation, there is “haptic” perception. As on our smartphones, when the touch screen responds to touch, this technology will allow the operator to have a virtual sense of touch. The point is to allow engineers to have a better idea of ​​how much force they should use to dig into regolith or lift a sample into an excavator.

Another interest is to allow future astronauts to have “an idea of ​​how lunar dust would feel and behave in lunar conditions – which have one-sixth the gravitational pull of Earth”, explains Joe Louca, the one of the researchers.

To decline on Mars?

For the moment, some obstacles remain, such as the effectiveness of the system depending on the manipulations. For example, remote control is very effective for collection, but less effective for dumping. Same lack of reliability for the transfer of material.

Another obstacle: money! It should therefore be remembered that this summer, NASA completely canceled the Viper rover project for economic reasons. But the American space agency had specified that the tools integrated into the rover would be used for other missions, such as the possible collection of ice on the Moon.

The fact remains that if these remote control techniques ultimately work on the Moon, the operation could be repeated for Mars. But the problem of signal delay would be much more complex to resolve since the signals between Earth and Mars oscillate between 3 and 20 minutes depending on the distance between the two planets.

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