Who remembers Lost in Space and laughing at the robot? Many children watching that show, and others like it, dreamed of growing up and becoming Astronauts. For some, those dreams became reality, as the Space Program became a reality with the first landing on the moon in 1969.
Fifty years later, we are truly on the edge of the TV joke becoming a reality. However, with that, the dreams of young children today may be lost to the advent of robots taking over the jobs of humans and animals on space missions. Eventually, robots will have enough capabilities to do the jobs that are now done by humans, experts say.
Russia is planning to send robots to the ISS (International Space Station) to do the jobs that are too dangerous for the astronauts. Currently, two military prototypes are being tested back on Earth. The Russians are hoping to launch them into orbit to perform tasks such as spacewalks.
If the Chinese space agency has their way, Iron Man may be leaving the big screen and heading to the moon. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the agency’s main contractor, recently unveiled a robot that looks remarkable like the Marvel Comic hero.
The report was led by researchers at the University of Surrey. They are developing systems to monitor and service spacecraft, explore new space frontiers, extra-terrestrial surfaces, and remove space debris. Having a high-powered, precision lens on the robots will help to give clearer readings on the images being sent back to earth. ‘Since the 1990s, a new generation of planetary exploration has travelled further into the solar system and is required to become increasingly more convincing as a human proxy in space,’ said lead author Professor Yang Gao, from the University of Surrey’s Space Centre.
‘This will lead to the development of robotic explorers and assistants that can carry out such complex tasks that they could tangibly replace humans in space or assist astronauts on a mission.’
Examples of the kind of machines that are in development include robotic arms capable of grabbing space debris and consigning it to a recycling bin, and ideas to ‘modularise’ spacecraft so that individual subsystem modules can be replaced if they fail.
In July of 2016, two researchers from Caltech working with NASA published a design for a robot that would have the capabilities to build a space telescope while in orbit. The robotically assembled modular space telescope (RAMST) would require an assembly robot to build an extremely large telescope in space, performing tasks in which astronaut fatigue would be a problem.
In 1990, when the Hubble Space Telescope first went into orbit, a misaligned mirror meant the images being sent back to Earth were fuzzy. In 1993, a group of seven astronauts had to embark on a mission to service the telescope and fix the mirror. Had a robot been on hand, missions like that would be avoidable.
As space robotics continue to broaden possible explorations in space, there is also an increasingly number of ways robotic technology can also be used right here on Earth.
‘Increasingly we are seeing non-space industries interested in applying our expertise to their own areas, such as the nuclear sector which also has to deal with a high radiation, hazardous environment,’ said Professor Gao. ‘Also, for the agricultural sector we’ve been asked to develop a small autonomous vehicle that can identify diseased crops, take high resolution images and deploy a robotic arm to take samples if required.’
‘We’re now developing robotic vision-based software for Sellafield which can help sort and segregate nuclear waste autonomously,’ she added.
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