00:22What if we told you that these robots are being controlled from space, 400 kilometers above Earth?
00:32From the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Johnny Kim is guiding a team of robots here on the ground.
00:42This 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,
01:11built at DLR's facilities in Germany.
01:19ESA's four-legged robot Spot navigated the terrain autonomously, locating and collecting the samples.
01:47ESA's four-legged robot Spot navigated the surface of the lake to the ground.
01:48It's all about the space that was designed to be used to create a new space for the Earth.
01:49The Earth is a part of the Earth.
01:50The Earth is a part of the Earth's work that takes place.
01:50The Earth is a part of the Earth's work that takes place.
02:00At a handover station, Johnny took over, supervising DLR's humanoid robot, Roland Justin, by selecting
02:08and combining high-level commands from a predefined set.
02:12He guided Justin through the steps needed to transfer the samples to a lander.
02:32In this kind of scenarios, we can control the robots as our avatars, either to remote-operated
02:39autonomous 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.
02:53A boulder blocked the way.
02:55Johnny used Interact's robotic arm to remove the obstacle and place Bert on the ground.
03:05But things didn't go smoothly on purpose.
03:09In a simulated malfunction, Bert detected one of its legs was damaged.
03:15Johnny 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.
03:37These challenges are designed to test how astronauts respond when things don't go as planned.
03:43What was really important there is that the robot, it can still make mistakes during this complex
03:50task because it has to collect sample tubes, bring it somewhere else, navigate, and to make
03:57this entire task autonomous, it's really important that it can also recover from its own failures,
04:03and that it then can retry again.
04:07Behind the scenes, the team worked to ensure stable and secure communication between the
04:12robots on Earth and Johnny on the ISS.
04:17To really grab a big portion of the rocks, I kind of be strategic about what part of the
04:22rock I'm going to grab.
04:30We've made so many advances together, from working with a single robot, working with simpler
04:37modalities of commanding robots, to having much more complex robotic teams, as you can
04:42see here.
04:43And now, of course, the robots and the astronauts are separated by an orbiting spacecraft, but
04:48if 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
04:59commands.
05:00So, we think through all of the scenarios and think that indeed humans and robots do well to
05:05explore together.
05:19But that's essentially what this app is developing.
05:19we are happening Adelaide in a Picasso.
05:21And last our meeting is Adelaide von Haas.
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