Science and exploration of the moon enabled by surface telerobotics

Abstract

Tele-operated rovers have been a feature of space exploration for decades. Ground control teams that operate these rovers generally comprise a robot operations team supported by science and robot engineering groups. But, in the future, astronauts will also remotely operate rovers. Several studies have proposed that astronauts should be able to control rovers from orbiting spacecraft such as the Deep Space Gateway (DSG). This concept of operations offers several benefits to human exploration. Firstly, it will enable astronauts to expand their sphere of influence beyond the confines of a spacecraft. Secondly, it will enable astronauts to safely perform surface work via an avatar. Thirdly, it will reduce the expenditure of life support consumables, and fourthly, it will spare astronauts from spending time on radiation-ravaged planetary surfaces. But integrating tele-operated rovers into human space exploration raises important questions. What system configurations are effective? Which modes of operation and control are most appropriate? When is it appropriate to rely (or not) on tele-operated rovers? The proposed research sought to answer the first two of these questions. It was designed to simulate three mission phases: pre-mission planning, site survey, and surface asset deployment. The study employed a derived terrain model located in the Lunares hab facility (located in Pila, Poland). Operators drove a Turtle rover through task sequences to survey sites while avoiding hazards/obstacles. This study simulated remote rover operations that assessed crew workload, crew situation awareness, robot asset acquisition, task sequence success, system issues, and rover performance. This study demonstrated basic competence in teleoperated rover driving, but more work must be conducted to produce a system that can behave reliably over many weeks and/or kilometers. Results indicated interactive monitoring is an effective strategy for crew-centric surface telerobotics. Safeguarded driving using this mode of operation enabled participants to perform each task successfully – success being measured by the metric of completing assigned tasks and completing the course. Participants maintained good situational awareness (SA) with low effort using interactive visualization of the rover state. From post-test debriefs it was determined participants maintained a high level of SA during operations and that the activity employed via the operator interface was a contributing factor to achieving these high levels. Since the test sessions were designed to be increasingly difficult in terms of task complexity it was expected that SA would decrease and task loading would increase across tasks and the data confirms this was the case.