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flight controllers here in the payload

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operations integration center are busy

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at work this morning they've been

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working with karen nyberg from the kibo

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module discussing melfi operations

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that's the station's minus 80 degree

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freezer that's used to store biological

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samples among other things in the

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meantime chris cassidy has been having a

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little fun all in the name of science

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he's been working with a new

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investigation called surface tele

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robotics that's where he actually gets

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to control a robot on the ground from

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the space station i spoke with the

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payload developer about these operations

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what we're looking at is ways for

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humans to control robots

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in you know different situations

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primarily to to aid in exploration

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so the other projects within human

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exploration telerobotics are robonaut 2

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which i'm sure a lot of people have

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heard about

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and smartphone spheres which is we've

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taken a smartphone and put it on the

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side of the spheres facility which also

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very many people are familiar with

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to

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basically make it a robot a free-flying

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robot they give it a little more

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computational power and some additional

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sensors that aren't already on board the

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spheres

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surface tele robotics is a

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what we're trying to do is have crew

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onboard space station control a robot on

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the surface of earth and this is a

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simulation of different types of

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missions that you could run

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say in orbiting vehicle around mars

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controlling a robot on the surface of

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mars or a

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crew vehicle at the lunar earth lagrange

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point on the far side of the moon

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controlling a robot on the far side of

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the moon which we cannot communicate

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without orbital

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assets in place because we have no line

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of sight

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so what we're testing is you know what

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do we need technology wise in order to

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do this sort of mission because we've

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never done anything like it before and

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so we need to understand com issues

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usability issues

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situational awareness so we're looking

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at our user interfaces you know do they

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give the crew the information that they

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need in order to understand

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what the robot's doing what's what's its

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uh status

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and then can they control it

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so what kind of hardware are we talking

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about are we talking about a little

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robot down here on earth yes we are

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we're talking about um a mer sized robot

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so those are the the last two rovers

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that were on mars the newer robot

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curiosity is quite a bit larger

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so it's about a meter by a meter by a

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meter a robot called k10 that we have at

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ames research center we've been using

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for about five or six years now

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so we're very experienced using it so we

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didn't we didn't want to have too many

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new variables in this experiment we're

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running off of our experiences doing

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analog missions where we've gone out to

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the arctic and you know california place

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deserts in california

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and arizona where we've tested the robot

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and done simulated uh science missions

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so we want to keep the sort of the

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robotic side of this test as you know uh

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as familiar as possible and really look

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more at sort of the human factor side

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look at the crew

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interaction with the robot that's really

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where our science is in this case uh

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robots are fun i mean for everybody uh

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you know and astronauts have as much fun

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with it as anybody else so

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they're neat because you can sort of

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they move around they do things and you

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can kind of relate to them

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how exciting is it for you to see a

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project come to fruition like this it's

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great i you know i haven't had much

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experience on the on the human space

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flight side of nasa's house we've mostly

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worked you play with robots i play with

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robots exactly so um you know we've

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worked sort of with the mars program in

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the past we've looked at

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um we have looked at robots uh to aid

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human exploration but we haven't

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actually flown anything with team of

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space flight before so

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um so even though we're not our

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project's not flying any hardware we're

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only flying software because we only

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need to send the gui up to the station

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for for the

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crew to control the hardware on the

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ground

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there's still a lot of things you have

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to do to make sure that everything's

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safe surprisingly even with software

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so for me it's a very new experience and

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it's really exciting because yeah i can

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say i've flown something now so

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i really like it it's fun

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and for more information on surface tele

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robotics and other investigations go to