INTERACT SPACE EXPERIMENT. telerobotics and haptics laboratory

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1 INTERACT SPACE EXPERIMENT Online Fact Sheet telerobotics and haptics laboratory

2 BACKGROUND Interactive robotics demonstration from on-board the ISS In early September this year, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen will perform a groundbreaking space experiment called Interact, developed by ESA in close collaboration with the TU Delft Robotics Institute. During the 2015 ESA Short Duration Mission, Mogensen will take control of the Interact Centaur rover on Earth from the International Space Station in real-time with force-feedback. The date of the activity has currently been planned for Monday the 7th of September, but is subjected to change dependent on the ISS activity schedule. The Mission The Interact experiment, conceived and implemented by the ESA Telerobotics & Haptics Laboratory, will be the first demonstration of teleoperation of a rover from space to ground in which during part of the experiment, the operator will receive force-feedback during control. The task set up for the astronaut is to maneuver the rover located at ESA s ESTEC technical center in Noordwijk through a special obstacle course, to locate a mechanical task board and to perform a mechanical assembly task. Once the task board is located and approached, the astronaut will use a specially designed haptic joystick in space to take control of one of the Centaur s robotic arms on Earth. With the arm he will execute a peg-in-hole assembly task to demonstrate the ability to perform connector mating through teleoperation with tight mechanical tolerances of far below one millimeter. The haptic feedback allows the astronaut to actually feel whether the connector is correctly inserted and, if necessary to fine-tune the insertion angle & alignment. The complete operation is performed from on-board the International Space Station, at approximately 400 km altitude, using a data connection via a geosynchronous satellite constellation at km altitude. The communication between the haptic joystick and the ground system is bi-directional, where both systems are essentially coupled. This socalled bi-lateral system is particularly sensitive to time delay, which can cause instability. The satellite connection, called the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), results in communication time delays as large as 0.8 seconds, which makes this experiment especially challenging. ESA copes with these challenges through specialized control algorithms developed at ESA s Telerobotics Laboratory, through augmented graphical user interfaces with predictive displays and with force sensitive robotic control algorithms on ground. These ESA technologies allow the operator to work in real-time from space on a planetary surface. It is as if the astronaut could extend his arm from space to ground. ESA TELEROBOTICS LAB Noordwijk, Netherlands

3 THE ASTRONAUT Astronaut Andreas Mogensen Set to launch to the International Space Station on the 2nd of September, Danish ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen is a preparing for a short-duration mission of a maximum of 10-days. Andreas has a background as an aerospace engineer and has familiarized himself with the technology at ESA s Telerobotics Laboratory. Andreas can be followed by visiting andreasmogensen.esa.int

4 THE TEAM ESA Telerobotics & Haptics Laboratory The Interact Experiment was conceived and developed by ESA s Directorate of Technical and Quality Management, in particular, within ESA s Telerobotics & Haptics Laboratory and in collaboration with the TU Delft Robotics Institute The Interact experiment is supported by the ESA Human Spaceflight and Exploration Directorate, in particular by its ISS Programme and Exploration Department. The ESA Telerobotics & Haptics Lab consists of a small but highly dynamic team of engineers and engineering academics. Led by Dr. André Schiele, Associate Professor at the Delft University of Technology, the team performs fundamental research in mechatronics, robotics and control theory. The Laboratory hosts several ESA staff members, research contractors and a varying number of Ph.D. and M.Sc. candidates supported via the Delft University of Technology. The Interact Centaur design was created in close collaboration with a team of Industrial Design Master Students from TU Delft in Follow the ESA Telerobotics & Haptics Lab by visiting esa-telerobotics.net

5 TECHNICAL FEATURES

6 Technical Features INTERACT CENTAUR The mobile robotic platform called the Interact Centaur was specifically designed to be able to maneuver through rough terrain at high speeds and to have the dexterity to perform very delicate and precise manipulation tasks through remote control. The custom vehicle design was brought from concept to reality in little over a year. ROBOTIC PAN-AND-TILT NECK AND HEAD A robotic 6 degrees of freedom Neck gives the cameras in the rover s head an enormous field of view, good for driving and for close visual inspection tasks. REAL-TIME CAMERAS The rover has 4 dedicated real-time streaming cameras that the astronaut can use during the mission. A head pan-tilt camera that will allow general contextual overview of the situation during driving and exploration of the environment. A tool camera mounted on the right robotic arm for vision during precise tool manipulation. Two hazard cameras (front and back) to view the near proximity area otherwise occluded by the chassis during driving. COMPUTING The robot makes use of seven high performance computers running software that has been programmed in a highly modular, model-based and distributed way. EXTERIOR DESIGN A custom-made exterior protects all delicate mechatronic and computing hardware from dust and ensures a good thermal design. ROBOTIC ARMS Two KUKA lightweight robotic arms on the front of the rover allow the operator to perform very precise manipulation tasks. The arms can be soft controlled to safely interact with humans or delicate structures and can be programmed to be compliant (like a spring and or damper) when they hit an object. The arms are equipped with highly force sensitive sensors and can flex and adapt in a similar manner to human arms during remote control. This allows to tightly couple those arms to an operator located far away by means of haptic (i.e. force-transmitting) interfaces. Their operation during the Interact experiment is very intuitive, allowing delicate and dexterous remote operations to take place across very long distances with the finest amount of force feedback to the operator despite the communication time delay. ROVER MOBILE PLATFORM The drivetrain and wheels for the Interact Centaur are a customized version of the remote controlled platform manufactured by AMBOT. This battery-powered, four-wheel-drive, fourwheel steering platform is weatherproof and gives the rover over 8 hours of run-time in challenging terrains.

7 AUGMENTED REALITY Virtual model overlays in real-time To provide extra support to the astronaut while driving the rover, an augmented reality (AR) overlay was developed. This allows for virtual markers such as predicted position markers to be displayed on top of the camera feed. 1. The current rover position is shown with two yellow blocks in front of the wheels. The current rover position is shown with two yellow blocks in front of the wheels. Similarly, white blocks indicate the predicted rover position. Before the rover moves the operator can see where the rover is going to end up. Green blocks are used to align the rover with the task board

8 LASER GUIDANCE Embedded lazer tool support To visually support the astronaut when performing the mechanical alignment during the peg-in-hole assembly task, a laser has been embedded within the tool. When hovering over the hole, the laser will be invisible indicating that the connection can be attempted. The Laser creates an artificial depth impression by a dedicated depth-cue. This allows executing such complex 3D tasks without requiring a dedicated stereo 3D video system, which would consume excessive data bandwidth. * *

9 SPACE TO GROUND Satellite communications Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) As a complicating factor, the signals between the astronaut and the robot must travel via a dedicated and highly complex network of satellites in geo-synchronous orbit. The signals will travel from the International Space Station via NASA s TDRSS to ground facilities in the U.S. From there, they cross the Atlantic Ocean to the ESA facilities in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Forces between the robot and its environment, as well as video and status data, travels back to the graphical user interface and the haptic joystick. In this round-trip, all signals cover a distance of nearly km. The resulting round trip time delay approaches one second in length. ESA developed a model-mediated control approach that allows to perform forcefeedback between distributed systems up to multiple seconds of time delay, without a noticeable reduction of performance, compared with directly coupled systems. Despite the fact that this smart software and control methods enable the astronaut to perform such tasks on Earth, research suggests that humans can only handle signal transmission time delays of up to about three seconds for control tasks that require hand-eye coordination. In theory this would allow haptic control from Earth to robotic systems on as far away as the surface of our Moon. International Space Station (ISS) ESTEC Noordwijk, Netherlands NASA Ground Terminals New Mexico, USA km

10 HAPTICS-1 JOYSTICK Teleoperation of earthbound robotics with real-time force-feedback from Space On-board the ISS, the astronaut will re-use equipment from the previous Telerobotics & Haptics Lab experiments called Haptics-1 and Haptics-2. For these experiments a tablet PC and a small force reflective joystick were flown to the ISS with the goal to evaluate human haptic perception in space and to validate realtime telerobotic operations from space to ground. During Haptics-1, on the 30th of December 2014, haptics was first used in the microgravity environment of the ISS. During Haptics-2, on June 3rd (21:00 CEST) 2015, for the first time in history, a handshake with force-feedback was performed between two humans, one located in space and on ground.

11 telerobotics and haptics laboratory WITH INTERACT, ESA AIMS TO PRESENT AND VALIDATE A FUTURE WHERE HUMANS AND ROBOTS EXPLORE SPACE TOGETHER. ROBOTS WILL PROVIDE THEIR OPERATORS MUCH WIDER SENSORY FEEDBACK OVER MUCH GREATER DISTANCES THAN WHAT CAN BE DONE BY TERRESTRIAL ROBOTS TODAY. NOT ONLY IN SPACE, BUT ALSO ON EARTH, REMOTE CONTROLLED ROBOTICS WILL PROVE HIGHLY ENABLING IN DANGEROUS AND INACCESSIBLE ENVIRONMENTS. THEY CAN BE USED IN ARCTIC CONDITIONS, IN THE DEEP SEA OR FOR ROBUST INTERVENTION IN NUCLEAR DISASTER SITES. WE CAN EXPECT THAT FUTURE HUMAN EXPLORATION MISSIONS TO THE MOON AND MARS WILL BENEFIT FROM SUCH ADVANCED HUMAN-ROBOTIC OPERATIONS. ESA S RESEARCH IN TELEROBOTIC TECHNOLOGIES AND ADVANCED CREW OPERATIONS FROM ORBIT WILL PLAY A KEY ROLE IN THESE COMING ADVENTURES. THE ESA TELEROBOTICS AND HAPTICS LABORATORY, ALONG WITH ESA S TECHNICAL AND SPACE EXPLORATION DIRECTORATE ARE DEDICATED TO TAKING THE NEXT BIG STEPS IN HUMAN-ROBOT COLLABORATION IN SPACE. ESA TELEROBOTICS & HAPTICS LABORATORY TU DELFT interact MOGENSEN ROBOTICS INSTITUTE