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The story tells that in 1999, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor (MIT) David Miller showed Star Wars to his students and told them to build a flying robot like that of the movie. It is here that the project SPHERES and its three floating spheres emerged, which helped astronauts work on the International Space Station for over 10 years. NASA is now working on its successor, Astrobee, which will be operational in 2019 and will be even more autonomous and versatile.
"It's like the Roomba Space Station," jokes engineer Jose Benavides of the Intelligent Systems Division of NASA's Ames Research Center. The comparison with the popular smart vacuum cleaner falls short, especially in this second generation of the robot. Astrobee can, for example, monitor radiation, sound or CO2. Take photos and record videos, and you can move around the resort with the help of a small arm, to help astronauts and their team, locate different objects and components in the space and help with the programming of satellites and other robots.
"It turns out that astronauts are wasting a lot of time repositioning cameras so that the Earth's control sees what's going on in the station, they're wasting a lot of time taking measurements, samples, to look for things … "explains Benavides. "All of these things are things that a robot can do alone."
More Autonomy and Possibilities
Over the last decade, SPHERE has already become one of the favorite "toys" of astronauts, who can use them to perform various tasks of research. With Astrobee, the possibilities will multiply. The new robot has many more interactive elements, such as a speaker, a touch screen, a microphone or a laser pointer, which facilitates communication with astronauts. In addition, it uses rechargeable batteries, unlike SPHERES single-use batteries, which allows it to be much more self-contained. In other words, while SPHERES needs astronauts to change the batteries and reprogram them, Astrobee will be able to work alone for hours.
The potential of Astrobee is even greater to study and develop even more complex devices. In the future, a robot of this type could make intelligent decisions with the information it collects, depending on the needs of astronauts. "There are concepts to send ships to the Moon or Mars without astronauts, to prepare everything and arrive later," says Benavides. "So we need robots that can maintain and do these things even when the astronauts are not there, and wait for them to arrive later."
Look at this:
Meet Astrobee, the new flight robotic assistant robot …
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Education and Awareness
NASA works with SPHERES robots in programs that go beyond technological development to enhance education and awareness. The Zero Robotics program, created by MIT, allows high school students to learn how to program these robots through a programming competition in which they face a challenge. For example, how to place GPS satellites around Mars or fend off asteroids from the Earth. Finalists can see how their code is used in the International Space Station with the help of astronauts.
For students, this is a good opportunity to learn science and technology, but also to program, sometimes for the first time. In this way, they can learn about the work of astronauts and engineers like Benavides. "A very common comment among us [los ingenieros] is, I would have liked this access when I was at school, programming robots and seeing them on the space station."
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