🚀 go-pugleaf

David Rowland <david@datamark.co.nz> writes:
> But wouldn't the robots been discussed here be operated remotely by
> ground based people.  This way, there is no need to program much AI
> into the system.  

No.  The transport lag in such a system would make it at best clumbsy,
at worst, dangerous to any humans in the area.  The space environment
isn't as outright nasty as, say, August in Houston, but it doesn't allow
a lot of mistakes.  Of course, it might be easier and cheaper to use a
remote manipulator from a crew onorbit (rather than having them go EVA)
but, with all due respects to the current holders of the World Series
trophy, the remote arm that the Shuttle's currently flying is a bitch
to operate.

Carl Hage <hage@netcom.com> writes:
> Is this partly due to a focus on manned space missions? How much research
> is done on developing space based robotic/remote-operated technology and
> designing space hardware suited for robotics vs research on manned space
> technology? Could this be somewhat of a self fulfilling prophesy in that
> if we have a manned space capability, e.g. the shuttle, then it's easier
> and more reliable to use it, therefore designs are made assuming manned
> assembly, therefore robotics technology is nowhere near building robots
> capable of such things and then we need manned space capability.

flb@flb.optiplan.fi (F.Baube x554) writes:
> (This may be naive but ..) How difficult could it be to take a 
> collection of JPL and university robot tinkerings and put them 
> in a shuttle small package and put them thru their paces ??
> The ones that look like they can work without babysitting 
> get subsequent rides on unmanned launchers.
> 

There's a shuttle payload planned called FTS-1.  This is a flight test
of some of the robotics hardware that was intended for SSF (although
the robots for SSF have been dropped from the plans).  As of July of
last year, the extent of the experiment was to have the arm go through
some autonomous tasks on a work board, and to move a 25kg mass through
a pre-defined path.  Even that turned out to be a headache because the
design review turned up at least one non-redundant data path for a
joint position/velocity encoder.  There was some concern that a
"pathological" failure might cause the arm to go into Konan mode,
swinging a 25 kg mass around the payload bay and muttering "Ahll Pe
Beck".

Also, there is a retreival robot under development for SSF construction
work; the goal is to have it be able to optically track "dropped"
tools, nuts, bolts, etc, go after them on it's own, and bring them
back.  There was some talk about it being able to retreive "dropped"
flight crew, but the Flight Crew Operations people just couldn't get
warm to the idea of automated grappling of an EVA suit.  Given what I
saw of the system status at the '91 Engineering Week displays, I can't
say as I blame them.  The system was barely capable of discerning paper
shapes on black felt.

> Is every dry run for SSF construction going to involve hundred-
> million-dollar gizmos with a MTBF of 0.2 shuttle missions ?

Flight certifying systems takes time and money.  How good would you feel
flying a commercial airliner if the FAA only put 10 hours of field testing
into an air traffic control system?  

And now, The Flame...
> 
> > Then again, some of NASA's funding comes
> > from the romance of humans being there, not robots (IMHO).
> 
> Aha .. the truth will out.
> 

Take a look at the statistics on college enrollments in engineering and
the sciences, then take a look at the stat's on crewed missions.  The
impact crewed space exploration has had on the engineering and science
communities in this country have, IMHO, paid for those programs.  If
you want to think that the NASA bias toward crewed programs is based on
funding, I'm certainly not going to change your mind.  However, there
are an awful lot of people who just don't think that firing toys into
the solar system is as awe inspiring as having _people_ out there,
regardless of the volume of raw data rerturned.

Lou Adornato uunet!ssi!lfa   | The secretary (and the rest of the company)
Supercomputer Systems, Inc   | have disavowed any knowledge of my actions.
Eau Claire, WI               |      ** Space IS our future! **