00:00What if we told you that these robots are being controlled from space, 400 kilometers above Earth?
00:30From the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Johnny Kim is guiding a team of robots here on the ground.
00:40This is all part of an experiment called Surface Avatar, a collaboration between ESA and the German Aerospace Center .
00:51Its goal? To explore how astronauts can command robotic teams from space,
00:57giving us the tools to one day explore the Moon and Mars together.
01:04The first part of the experiment involved retrieving sample containers scattered across a simulated Martian landscape,
01:12built at DLR's facilities in Germany.
01:19ESA's four-legged robot Spot navigated the terrain autonomously, locating and collecting the samples.
01:27So, in the Air Force, some of those stakeholders are connected.
01:30We wanted togin' several maps, but they're not in the ground,
01:31the only ones that you like to tell us about was the only one who's king.
01:33The other people of the universe that they are coming out of the Earth,
01:36the most famous things about the impact of humans to the Earth,
01:38the most famous people that they live in the Earth,
01:39the most famous people that they are coming out of the Earth.
01:40They are coming out of the background of the CHRISTOPHER.
01:42At a handover station, Johnny took over, supervising DLR's humanoid robot, Roland Justin, by selecting
02:08and combining high-level commands from a pre-defined set.
02:13He guided Justin through the steps needed to transfer the samples to a lander.
02:19In this kind of scenarios, we can control the robots as our avatars, either to remote
02:38operated autonomous commands to execute certain tasks.
02:42Next came a simulated cave exploration.
02:47ESA's Interact rover transported a smaller robot dog, Bert, to the cave entrance.
02:54A boulder blocked the way.
02:56Johnny used Interact's robotic arm to remove the obstacle and placed Bert on the ground.
03:06But things didn't go smoothly on purpose.
03:09In a simulated malfunction, Bert detected one of its legs was damaged.
03:16Johnny had to retrain the robot dog's walking algorithm in real time before it could continue
03:21into the cave.
03:22I think that obstacle has moved sufficiently for Bert to get in.
03:30Once fixed, Bert entered the cave and detected signs of ice, like we might find on Mars.
03:38These challenges are designed to test how astronauts respond when things don't go as planned.
03:44What was really important there is that the robot can still make mistakes during this complex
03:50task.
03:51It has to collect sample tubes, bring it somewhere else, navigate.
03:56And to make this entire task autonomous, it's really important that it can also recover from
04:02its own failures and that it then can retry again.
04:08Behind the scenes, the team worked to ensure stable and secure communication between the robots
04:13on Earth and Johnny on the ISS.
04:25The Surface Avatar experiment has advanced how humans and robots interact.
04:30We've made so many advances together from working with a single robot, working with simpler modalities
04:38of commanding robots, to having much more complex robotic teams, as you can see here.
04:43And now, of course, the robots and the astronauts are separated by an orbiting spacecraft.
04:48But if you imagine in the future, the astronaut and the robot could actually go hand in hand
04:53and explore together almost like a shepherd with its dog, so the astronaut could give voice commands.
05:00So we think through all of the scenarios and think that indeed human and robots do well to
05:05explore together.
05:23That's a good idea.
05:28Yeah, thanks.
05:32Oh, yeah.
05:34Oh.
05:36Oh.
05:37Oh.
05:42Oh.
05:43Oh.
05:46Oh.
05:46Oh.
05:48Oh.
05:49Oh.
05:51Oh.
05:53Oh.
Comments