Story 3RD NASA To Test Free-Flying Housekeeper Robots

NASA To Test Free-Flying Housekeeper Robots

by
in space on (#3RD)
story imageSince 2006, three bowling ball-size free-flying Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) have been floating around the International Space Station. Now, they are attaching a smartphone to the spheres, making them "Smart SPHERES", a more "intelligent" free-flying robot with built-in cameras to take pictures and video, sensors to help conduct inspections, powerful computing units to make calculations and Wi-Fi connections to transfer data in real time to the computers aboard the space station and at mission control in Houston.
In a two-phase experiment, astronauts will manually use the smartphones to collect visual data using the integrated custom 3-D sensor to generate a full 3-D model of their environment. After the map and its coordinate system are developed, a second activity will involve the smartphones attached to the SPHERES, becoming the free-flying Smart SPHERES. As the free-flying robots move around the space station from waypoint to waypoint, utilizing the 3-D map, they will provide situational awareness to crewmembers inside the station and flight controllers in mission control. These experiments allow NASA to test vision-based navigation in a very small mobile product.

"NASA uses robots for research and mission operations; just think about the rovers on Mars or the robotic arm on the ISS or space shuttle," said Chris Provencher, manager of the Smart SPHERES project. "Inside the ISS space is limited, so it's really exciting to see technology has advanced enough for us to demonstrate the use of small, mobile robots to enhance future exploration missions."

Ultimately it is the hope of researchers that these devices will perform housekeeping-type tasks, such as video surveys for safety and configuration audits, noise level measurements, air flow measurements, and air quality measurements, that will offset work the astronauts currently perform.
Reply 3 comments

Holy acronym... (Score: 1)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-07-22 15:24 (#2M8)

S.P.H.E.R.E.S., eh? I've started to think we should just come up with nice words or names to label our cool new devices or projects and forget about trying to come up with the Acronym connection... sometimes -- as in this case -- it just seems we are trying way too hard...

On a more serious note... (Score: 1)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-07-22 15:26 (#2M9)

I would pay on the order of a $100 to $10,000 dollars to have the ability to produce a detailed map, digital elevation model, and vegetation map of my property using a flying camera/sensor/mapper -- would be absolutely fantastic for planning purposes from building houses, outbuildings, to planting gardens and so on. I wonder what the cost is to buy or rent this technology at a consumer level.

Re: On a more serious note... (Score: 1)

by lhsi@pipedot.org on 2014-07-24 08:14 (#2MR)

These ones float around in space, so might not work as well on earth (unless you wanted to roll them down a hill or something)