Robonauts or Men - Which Will Step Foot on Mars First ?

Mars will most likely be the next giant leap for mankind but it's not certain that the feet that will step onto it will belong to a man or a woman. The development of the Robonaut, humanoid robots that will go to Mars in our place is well underway some experts say they are cheaper safer and more effective and sending humans to the Red Planet so will a living breathing person ever set foot on Mars?. It was difficult enough getting to the moon just 239,000 miles or 385,000 kilometers away from Earth that's nothing compared to a 34 million miles or 55 million kilometers distance to Mars and that then its closest approach get the timing wrong and that increases to nearly 250 million miles or 400 million kilometers. Since 1960 there have been 55 missions to the red planet of those 25 have failed, another four of partially failed eight machines remain in operation on or around Mars with the opportunity Rover launched in 2003 the Curiosity rover launched in 2011 being the only operational robots on the planet. In the skies above Mars there are six orbiters monitoring the weather and geological patterns but all those are pretty old tech, within the next two decades it's hoped that the exploration of Mars will be taken over by robonaut's. Engineers have been working on human shaped robots but offer all the advantages of the latest technology plus the ability to work alongside humans humanoid machines can be used to simulate the experience of humans in extreme conditions offering more information on how to protect people if they should ever go there. One of the key developments in robonaut's was a ASIMO unveiled by the Honda corporation in 2000. ASIMO is the size of a twelve-year-old boy and capable of walking running and even dancing like a human. Technology took a huge leap forward as a result of the DARPA Robotics Challenge contest which took place between 2012 and 2015. Entries were invited that could complete eight tasks focused around search-and-rescue operations on earth including been able to drive a vehicle, walk across rubble, open doors, climbing ladders and use tools. The contest led to creation of androids that could pick themselves up if they fell over communicate using speech recognition and facial expressions and move in a realistic human way. But NASA's Robonaut series appear to have achieved the most. They were built with the idea of working in space alongside humans in mind. Robonaut 1 came in two versions between 1997 and 2002 and explored the use of teleoperation. They could be remotely controlled by a user who was elsewhere due to its human-like hands and arms it didn't need specially designed tools and to use the ones that astronauts you but R1 was basically a torso that could be a attached to a base with wheels so it wasn't fully capable of human motion. Neither was R2 but the later model proved so successful but it was flown to the International Space Station in 2012. The R2 began working on basic tasks through the use of telepresence a complex system of cameras sensors and feedback suppliers that gave the remote operated the feeling that they were actually there with the robot. R2 was designed to be capable of moving and even working outside the ISS but the framework to make it truly mobile wasn't supplied although it did get a pair of legs later in to its mission. The latest Robonaut is the R5 also known as the "Valkyrie" which was based on the search and rescue principles of the DARPA contest but also with the exploration of Mars in mind. Four Valkyries have been built, each Valkyrie is 6 feet tall, weighs 300 pounds, 150 kilos and costs around $2 million dollars to build. Each contains nearly 200 sensors, 5 feedbacks and 28 torque control joints to mimic human movement but there are still problems with sending robonaut's to Mars. Latency is the biggest one, it takes three and a half minutes that the shortest distance between Earth and Mars and 22 minutes at the longest distance for a signal to go just one way and in the same amount of time to return. That rules out real-time operation by telepresence it's hoped that improvements in artificial intelligence will help solve a problem although it won't cure it completely. Cost is another issue, sending a robot to Mars instead of a human is cheaper because a robot doesn't need life support systems or supplies that a person does and it doesn't need to come back to earth but one of the main reasons the Apollo missions to the moon were funded was because people were going. The human adventure made the prospect exciting for public and the international tensions of the space race era meant there was political and military adavntages to covering the costs. If we're not sending men to Mars who wants to pay for it as professor Stephen Hawking said in 2009 "Robotic missions do not catch the public imagination in the same way and they do not spread the human race into space which should be a long-term strategy. We will have the world go where no one has done before ". It's also not fully accepted that robots are better than people in the first place along with the speed of human decision-making and reaction it's argued that people are more cost effective when you evaluate how much scientific information they retrieve per dollar spent. In 2005 the UK's Royal Astronomic Survey Commission on the scientific case for human space exploration discussed the topic. They argued that in 1972 the astronauts of Apollo 17 traveled 36 kilometers across the moon service while the Opportunity Rover was taken eight years to cover almost the same distance on Mars. They pointed out that with no return requirement for robots, no material from the surface of Mars had yet been brought back to earth compared to nearly 400 kilograms of moon samples. In 2007 an experiment took place at the Haughton impact crater in Canada where a human in a spacesuit worked alongside a robot operated by telepresence. In the test the human was found to be between 10 and 100 times more effective than the machine which was more advanced than anything on Mars. At the time Steve Squyres, who was part of the opportunity team admitted that most things a rover could do in a day could be done by a human in less than a minute. It was also argued that the robot missions weren't getting cheaper as expected it's always been assumed that the miniaturization of technology would make growth smaller and lighter but as the need to discover more specific information increased the type of experiments we need then became heavier and the probes actually became bigger and therefore more expensive to send. So robot or human, or robot and human. It looks like the robonaut's could go to Mars first to pave the way for humans then when humans arrive they'll work alongside their automated friends. But there is a compromise option, instead of going all the way to Mars astronauts might set up base on one of the planets moons Phobos or Deimos then send robots to the surface to be operated by telepresence from a much closer distance than Earth. But the idea of humans going nearly all the way to Mars and not quite getting there perhaps for decades afterwards even gonna sit well with the fans of human adventure and ultimately the ones bankrolling the missions. Meanwhile the next stage of robotic development could be unveiled shortly with the final round of NASA's space robotic challenge. 20 teams will compete to operate the virtual Valkyrie robot in a Martian environment complete with the latency issues they would have to face in real life. The winning team gets a million dollars but the advance in the fields of Robotics is the real prize. So thanks for watching and I'll just like to say that this episode shirt is a Trip flames by madcap England and is available from Atom Retro with worldwide shipping from here in the UK and also that yet we have the curious droid Facebook page and group where you can suggest ideas for new videos and the link is on the channel page and you could also translate any of the videos with the community contributions which we have a video on if you're unsure of in the uploaded video section so as always thanks for watching and please subscribe rate and share.

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 160,510

Rating: 4.9361668 out of 5

Keywords: Robonauts, Robonaut, robot, humanoid robot, nasa, mars, martian, Opportunity rover, Curiosity rover, Asimo, DARPA Robotics Challenge, Robonaut 1, r2, r5, robonaut r5 valkyrie, telepresence, Stephen Hawking, space, mission, science, red planet, exploration, astronaut, curious-droid.com, apollo, curious droid, space race, robots, spacecraft, martians, planets, Haughton impact crater, Steve Squyres, Madcap England, AtomRetro.com, Trip Flames, Martin Kielty, Valkyrie, paul shillito

Id: OG6EBXet6q4

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2017