This self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the “Quela” drilling location in the “Murray Buttes” area on lower Mount Sharp. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Late morning, red skies over Mars, and the first human interloper emerges from her landing craft to review the dusty expanse. As she eases carefully down the ladder towards the alien earth, her mind spins with the words that, like Armstrong’s, will echo forever in the human conscious. She speaks and, when her signal reaches home just over three minutes later, 11 billion hearts skip a beat. It’s a powerful image, oft perpetuated in such media as the upcoming National Geographic “global event series” MARS. But below is another, far realer image: the crater left by Schiaparelli after its parachute jettisoned too early and it ploughed into the Martian surface, fatally. Images like this illustrate the truly difficult, dangerous and costly business of spaceflight.

Schiaparelli crash site in colour. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Losing robots is dramatically less costly—both existentially and financially—than losing humans, hence the push to design robots here on Earth capable of performing in harsh environments considered to pose an unsatisfactory risk to humans. But when it comes to the globally harsh environment of Mars, we tend to accept unanimously, axiomatically, that the end goal must be to send humans to conquer it, and soon! Advocates of a Martian human spaceflight goal—such as Elon Musk, Explore Mars Inc, and The Mars Society—are pushing for a human presence on the Red Planet by the 2030s, arguably underestimating the difficulty of achieving such a horizon in just two decades, and offering little to no justification for colonization other than the vague hero myth of manifest destiny. At the very least, if we’re to send our covered wagons rolling and ruining across a new celestial frontier, should we not first qualify why the $10¹⁰ it’d likely cost wouldn’t be better spent on further robotics-lead research missions?

The massive achievements of humanity’s still primitive and variable robot explorers have surely justified continued funding over infinitely more complex manned missions. Could a human have done such a better job than Curiosity, Spirit or Opportunity, so as to justify the inordinately higher risks? And what could more multifaceted, technologically advanced robot explorers achieve on humanity’s behalf, given time and funding? And whether they’re successful in their missions, or rain down like silvery chaff from the thin, Martian skies, the lessons we learn are invaluable. It’s never too soon for robots. And it’s always worth the risk. Can we say the same about human spaceflight missions?

Closer to home

Preferring also to focus on the horizon goal of humans on Mars by the 2030s, NASA currently has no plans to return to the moon. Or so we thought. However, at the end of October this year, NASA announced it was “seeking information from potential partners” who were interested in designing small robotic payloads that could be launched and sent to the surface of the moon within a 2017-2020 timeframe. NASA’s primarily interested in understanding how future missions to Mars might use robot technology to generate resources like water and oxygen, create usable fuel for spacecraft, conduct in-space and extraterrestrial manufacturing and construction, and other operations relevant to making a future Martian colony work. It’s clear NASA see the moon as a mere technological proving ground, a springboard to Mars. But other experts in the field (even at NASA) argue for something a little more permanent on the Lunar surface.

Artist’s impression of a permanent moon colony. Image credit: NASA

Commenting in a recent Popular Science article, NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay concluded: “We’re not going to have a research base on Mars until we can learn how to do it on the Moon first.” He pointed out how new technologies here on Earth, such as self-driving cars and waste-recycling technologies, can make establishing a Lunar colony cheaper and more achievable than ever before. Taking the time and resources to first establish a permanent moon base might push back the timeline for manned Mars missions, but offers a multitude of advantages in the long run: it’s a cheaper, safer, more achievable goal, closer to home, that can potentially offer a blueprint to how human-robot interaction might evolve outside of Earth’s protective shield. It’d be a big deal to see human’s living on the moon. Equally, wouldn’t it be a big deal to see the first robot manufactured on another planetary body?

Together forever, as one

I’m not saying that humans should stay Earthbound forever, never leaving for Mars. I’m simply advocating a deeper, more informed conversation. Let’s not run 225 million kilometers away before we’re ready. Let’s set achievable, affordable goals and learn all the lessons we can from our robot partners, our canaries in the coal mine.

But I get it. I’m pooping the party aren’t I?

I can empathise with the visceral, reflexive response I provoke in fellow enthusiasts—akin to chewing on sour cud—when I allude to the notion that humans shouldn’t necessarily emigrate to a dead and deadly desert planet just yet. I too was raised in the West by “the greatest generation”, and their “baby boomer” offspring, to whom human spaceflight was far more personal, less justified by scientific enquiry and more inspired by geopolitical, socioeconomic factors. The cardboard-box suited astro-child in me gasps, enthralled at the thought of humans living on Mars. Ah, the wonder, the excellence of the human spirit…

Artist’s impression of Martian colony. Image credit: NASA

But that isn’t a rational response. What’s rational is weighing realist human spaceflight goals against what can first be achieved with cheaper, expendable robot alternatives. Should we not curb our enthusiasm, our collective delusion of achieveability, and concentrate on paving the way, gradually, for more established and long-lasting spaceflight architecture? Or, to a greater extreme, could and should humanity’s lasting impression on the Universe be not boot prints in dust and regolith, but the intrepid robot ambassadors we created and sent forth to better our understanding of ourselves?

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See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Photo: Gretchen Ertl

Sarah Hensley is preparing an astronaut named Valkyrie for a mission to Mars. It is 6 feet tall, weighs 300 pounds, and is equipped with an extended chest cavity that makes it look distinctly female. Hensley spends much of her time this semester analyzing the movements of one of Valkyrie’s arms.

As a fourth-year electrical engineering student at MIT, Hensley is working with a team of researchers to prepare Valkyrie, a humanoid robot also known as R5, for future space missions. As a teenager in New Jersey, Hensley loved to read in her downtime, particularly Isaac Asimov’s classic robot series. “I’m a huge science fiction nerd — and now I’m actually getting to work with a robot that’s real and not just in books. That’s like, wow.”

Hensley is studying Valkyrie for an advanced independent research program, or SuperUROP, as one of only three undergraduate students in the Robot Locomotion Group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Most of her colleagues are graduate-level researchers and postdocs with extensive experience working on complex humanoids. The group is led by professor of electrical engineering and computer science Russ Tedrake, who successfully programmed Valkyrie’s predecessor (named Atlas) to open doors, turn valves, drill holes, climb stairs, and drive a car for the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2015.

Valkyrie has 28 torque-controlled joints, four body cameras, and more than 200 individual sensors, Hensley says. The robot can walk, bend its joints, and turn a door handle. “This is one of the most advanced robots in the world. And it’s 20 feet from my desk,” she adds.

That’s largely because Valkyrie has a long way to go before it leaves for Mars. MIT is one of three institutions, including Northeastern University and the University of Edinburgh, that NASA selected to develop software enabling the robot to perform space-related tasks — open airlock hatches, attach and remove power cables, repair equipment, and retrieve samples. Oh yeah, and get to its feet when it falls down.

Hensley, who started in the lab over the summer, is intrigued by the challenge of harmonizing the movements of such a highly complex system. “I am trying to solve a very tricky problem,” she says. She’s working out how best to control Valkyrie’s elbow movements by comparing two potential approaches. One uses a main controller to gather information from the various motor systems within the arm, and then uses that data to make accurate movement decisions. The other approach is decentralized, and leaves it to each motor system to decide and act on its own.

Hensley gets animated discussing the alternatives. “Is it better to have multiple decision makers with access to different information? Or is better to have one decision maker choosing all of the motor inputs?” she asks. Hensley has already been accepted into a master’s degree program in electrical engineering at MIT. She hopes to be able to continue her work on Valkyrie.

Every day, Hensley leaves Tau Epsilon Phi, her co-ed fraternity house in the Back Bay; walks across the Massachusetts Ave. bridge to the Stata Center; and plants herself in front of two large monitors in the robotics lab. She analyzes a wealth of scientific literature and writes code for computer simulations of the equations that move the robot’s arm. Sometimes she gets up for peppermint tea, or to peer around the corner of her cubicle at Valkyrie.

One thing is certain, says Hensley. Pop culture fears that machines may soon prove superior to humans are laughable. When Valkyrie is turned on and moves, Hensley says, it often “kind of shivers and falls down. One thing you realize working in this lab is that we are really far away from the robot apocalypse,” she quips. “Sometimes robots work, and sometimes they don’t. That’s our challenge.”

Image: ESA/ATG medialab

In Darmstadt, Germany, European Space Agency (ESA) teams are scrambling to confirm contact with the Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM), Schiaparelli—the spectre of Philae still haunting the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC). Whether or not ESA ever speak to Schiaparelli again, the risky business of space robotics is once more laid bare.

Editors note: Since this article was written, ESA are attempting to decode a partial signal from the EDM

After Schiaparelli’s release from its mothership—The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO)—the 577 kg EDM was programmed to autonomously perform an automated landing sequence, with parachute deployment and front heat shield release between 11 and 7 km above the Martian surface, all the time collecting data on the pressure, surface temperature and heat flux on its back cover as it passed through the atmosphere.  Then, 1100 m from the ground, retrorocket braking was supposed to slow the EDM before a final fall from a height of 2 m, protected by a crushable structure. But sometime during this process the signal was lost. ESA_Shiaparelli’s twitter feed soon fell silent also.

If Schiaparelli reached the surface safely, its batteries should be able to support operations for three to ten days, offering multiple opportunities to re-establish a communication link and collect data from its suite of sensors designed to measure wind speed and direction, humidity, pressure, atmospheric temperature, transparency of the atmosphere, and atmospheric electrification. But if contact is never restored, it’ll be a hefty blow to ExoMars and ESA’s aim of testing key technologies in preparation for their contribution to subsequent missions to Mars, including a planned 2020 rover that will carry a drill and a suite of instruments dedicated to exobiology and geochemistry research.

Image: ESA/ATG medialab

Such robotic technology has the potential to stretch our cosmological horizon, and perhaps even detect traces of extra-terrestrial life. But there’s a cost.  The ExoMars program runs up a bill totaling €1.3 billion, and such failures (if a failure it be) naturally raise questions of risk versus reward, particularly in tight economic times. Michael Johnson of the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, and founder of PocketSpacecraft.com, once told me during an interview: “About 50% of space missions fail after launch.” He shrugged. “That’s life… This is a high risk, high reward activity.”

In no other field of robotics is the potential of catastrophic failure so present and accepted. But how long can this attitude be maintained? The consensual public funding of—and indeed existence of—future space missions is parasitic upon the success of space robots and automated technology, and vice versa. Can you hear us Schiaparelli?

…

Come in, Schiaparelli.

…?

Image: ESA/ATG medialab

BUT ALL IS NOT LOST. The difficulties surrounding the mission’s EDM might potentially overshadow the successes of its TGO, which successfully performed the long 139-minute burn required to be captured by Mars, and has entered an elliptical orbit around the Red Planet. TGO’s Mars orbit Insertion burn lasted from 13:05 to 15:24 GMT on 19 October, reducing the spacecraft’s speed and direction by more than 1.5 km/s. The TGO is now on its planned orbit around Mars, primed with a suit of scientific equipment to measure the Martian atmosphere from on high. You win some, you lose some. This 50:50 success rate exemplifies the apparent nature of space robotics.

Click here to keep up to date with the latest ExoMars developments.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also be interested in:

• Drone learns to see in zero-gravity
• Robots Podcast #217: LunaRoo, with Jürgen Leitner
• The four coolest NASA robots
• Exoskeletons: From helping people walk to controlling robots in space
• NASA Space Robotics Challenge prepares robots for the journey to Mars

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

What are you thinking? Robots and humans working together need to understand – and even trust – each other. NASA Johnson/flickr

If we are serious about long-term human presence in space, such as manned bases on the moon or Mars, we must figure out how to streamline human-robot interactions.

Right now, even the most basic of robots seem to have impenetrable brains. When I bought an autonomous vacuum cleaner, one that roams the house on its own, I thought I was going to save time and be able to enjoy a book or a movie, or play longer with the kids. I ended up robot-proofing every room, making sure wires and cables are out of the way, closing doors, placing electronic signposts for the robot to follow and much more – often daily. I cannot fully understand or predict what the system will do, so I don’t trust it. As a result, I play it safe, and spend time doing things to accommodate the needs I imagine the robot might have.

As a space roboticist, I think about this sort of problem happening in orbit. Imagine an astronaut on a spacewalk, working on repairing something damaged on the outside of the spacecraft. Several tools might be needed, and parts to mend or replace others. An autonomous spacecraft could serve as a floating toolbox, holding parts and tools until they’re needed, and staying close to the astronaut as she moves around the area needing to be fixed. Another robot could be clamping parts together before they are permanently fastened.

How will these robots know where they’ll be needed to go next, to be useful but not in the way? How will the astronaut know whether the robots are planning to move to the place she actually needs? What if something comes loose unexpectedly – can the person and the machinery figure out how to stay out of each other’s way while handling the situation efficiently? In weightless space, spatial orientation is difficult and the dynamics of moving around one another are not intuitive.

Problems around effective communication between people and their machines – particularly about actions and intentions – arise throughout the field of robotics. They must be solved if we are to fully take advantage of the potential robots enable for us.

Feeling safe crossing the road

Understanding robots is already an increasing problem here on Earth. One day I found myself walking down a California road where autonomous cars are tested. I asked myself, “How would I know if a driverless vehicle is going to stop at the crosswalk?” I have always relied on eye contact and cues from the driver, but those options may be soon gone.

Robots have trouble understanding us, too. I recently read of an autonomous car unable to process a situation where a bicycle rider balanced himself for some time at an intersection, without putting his feet down. The onboard algorithms could not determine if the biker was going or staying.

A self-portrait of the Mars rover Curiosity.
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

When we look at space exploration and defense, we find similar problems. NASA has not used the full abilities of some of its Mars rovers, simply because the engineers could not be sure what would happen if the metallic pets were free to explore and investigate the Red Planet on their own. The humans didn’t trust the machines, so they prevented them from doing as much as they could.

The Department of Defense often uses crews of 10 or more trained personnel to support a single unmanned aerial vehicle up in the sky. Is such a drone really autonomous? Does it require the people, or do the people need it? In any case, how do they interact?

What is “autonomy,” really?

While “autonomy” means “self-governance” (from Greek), no man is an island; the same appears to be valid for our robotic creations. Today we see robots as agents able to operate independently – like my vacuum cleaner – but still part of a team – the family’s efforts to keep the house clean. If they are truly working with us, rather than instead of us, then communication is key, as well as the ability to infer intent. We may go solo for most duties, but sooner or later we will need to be able to connect with the rest of the team.

Do drones need people or do people need drones? Source: U.S. Air Force/Wikipedia Commons

The problem is that autonomous machines and humans do not fully understand each other, and often speak in languages each other does not know – and has not yet started to learn.

The question for the future is how we transmit intent between humans and robots, in both directions. How do we learn to understand – and then to trust – machines? How do they learn to trust us? What cues might each offer the other? Understanding intentions and trusting our fellow humans is already a bumpy ride, but at least we have known cues we can rely on – like pedestrian-driver eye contact at a crosswalk. We need to find new ways to read robots’ minds, the same way they need to be able to understand ours.

Perhaps an astronaut could be given a specialized display to show what the helper spacecraft’s intentions are, much like the gauges in an airplane cockpit show the plane’s status to the pilot. Maybe the displays would be embedded in a helmet visor, or enhanced by sounds that have specific meanings. But what information would they transmit, and how would they know it?

These questions are open ground for new work, the type of learning we’ll need to find to unlock an exciting future of unimaginable exploration in which a new species, the robot, can lead us farther than ever before.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.