Image: NASA/GSFC The most efficient way to exploring other planets may be sending humans to orbit, and letting robots do everything else.

As we start looking towards more comprehensive exploration of the Moon and of Mars, the assumption is that were working on sending humans to the surface of those worlds. Its going to be exponentially more difficult and dangerous than sending robots, but thats what exploration is all about, right?

Theres an article in the current issue of Science Robotics that discusses an alternative approacha kind of compromise between sending only humans or only robots. The idea isusing robotictelepresence for planetary exploration. From orbit, the authors argue, a small team of humans would remote operate rovers and other robotic systems and as a result they could do more exploration while keeping the overall mission safer and cheaper.

We already use telerobotics for planetary explorationweve got robots all over the solar system sending us data and then patiently doing what we tell them to do. This is different than telepresence, because of the latency involved: It takes long enough (minutes to hours) for a signal traveling at the speed of light to make it from Earth to Mars or Saturn and back again. That means that theres no way for us to have a real presence experience.

In theScience Robotics article, Dan F. Lester, Kip V. Hodges, and Robert C. Anderson from Exinetics, in Austin, Texas, Arizona State University, in Tempe, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, inPasadena, Calif.,arguefor sending humans into space specifically to reduce latency to something tolerable (better than 0.5 second), for example going into orbit around Mars (but not to the surface) just to make it so that humans can control robots on the surface through telepresence in near real-timewith the robots also doing things on their own when needed.

The European Space Agency (ESA)tried this kind of thing out recently, with an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) directly controlling a robot on Earth. We wrote about it here, and theres an article from ESA here. NASA has been trying it in the other direction as well, controlling Robonaut 2 on the ISS from the ground.

There are lots of reasons why space agencies are working on orbital telepresence, many of which are illustrated in the NASA artwork at the top of this article. Using relatively simple assistive autonomy, a horde of robots can spend most of their time wandering around on their own, while a few humans jump between them via telepresence from orbit to provide guidance.

The robot horde can consists of all kinds of different platforms, like driving robots, flying robots, robots that can scale cliffs, robots with arms, robots with drills, robots with lasers, or anything else you want. If some of the robots get stuck or break, its not a big deal, youve got more. Some robots could even collect samples on the surface, and then send them up to you inside little rockets. And, as autonomy improves and robots get better at autonomous navigation and even doing autonomous science, humans will be able to control more and more of them at once, only stepping in when necessary.

As I see it, there are two fundamental questions about using telepresence robots for exploration:

As robots and telepresence get more capable and more reliable, NASA isnt the only one who will have to make decisions like these. Already, you can rent telepresence robots for conferences and to tour museums (or zoos), getting some significant percentage of the value of being there in person without having to spend time and money on travel.

Its certainly better than nothing right now, but at some point, it might be almost as good as the real thing in some ways, and even better than the real thing in others. For those of us who dont have the option for travel, telepresence will be a valuable tool, and for those of us who do have the option for travel, well have to decide whether its really worth it, for destinations around this world, or to another.

[ Science Robotics ]

IEEE Spectrums award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Are Telepresence Robots the Best Way to Explore Other Worlds? - IEEE Spectrum