Robots in Space

Kondraske, G.V. and Khoury, G.J. 1992. Telerobotic system performance measurement motivation and methods. In Cooperative Intelligent Robotics in Space III, SPIE, Vol. 1829, pp. 161-172. 

Dowling, K., R. Bennett, M. Blackwell, T. Graham, S. Gatrall, R. O Toole, and H. Schempf. A mobile robot system for ground servicing operations on the space shuttle. Cooperative Intelligent Robots in Space, SPIE, November, 1992. 

The 260 million Pathfinder and the Mars rovers are sending streams of data from the Martian surface back to Earth. Meanwhile, the International Space Station has been bedeviled by a seemingly endless stream of accidents. The Mir space station, brought back to Earth and crashed into the ocean after 15 years in 2001, had several incidents where lives were at great risk, including a fire and a collision with a docking ship. The greatest measurable achievements in space have been made by the unmanned robotic vehicles and instruments. 

Manned space flights are supported by the notion that humans need to explore—in specially protected spacecrafts—but still at great risk to life. And in a sense Congress wants manned space travel to support an industry that builds the costly crafts. Unmanned spacecrafts are supported by scientists who believe that robots, at this stage of space travel, can do anything better than a human can do in space, and send back data at least as well as can humans. 

Hospital in New York. The primary motivation originally was the thinly spread expertise around the world for certain specialized types of surgery. Another motivation is the lack of availability of any kind of special surgery in certain remote areas ships and submarines at sea contaminated areas due to a nuclear accident, chemical spill, epidemics, or bioterror or in space (e.g., NASA or other remote missions providing the robots to be pre-located or delivered). 

Bach-y-Rita, R, Webster, J.G., Tompkins, W.J., and Crabb, T. 1987. Sensory substitution for space gloves and for space robots. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Space Telerobotics, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Publication S7-13, pp. 51-57. 

Movement As we saw in Chapter 12, pitch, yaw, and roll describe movement in space. In this case, we are concerned with the movements of a robotic arm (Figure 17-20). Up and down motion is referred to as pitch. Movement to the left or right is called yaw. Rotating movement is called roll. Your shoulder can move in all three directions it has pitch, yaw, and roll. Your elbow, however, has only pitch. Your wrist can move up and down, side to side, and can twist a small amount. 

In this chapter, we review the achievements of healthcare robotics in recent decades. We first discuss robotic systems for surgical operations that improve patient safety. We then review physical therapy training/assistive robots for disabled and aging people. Here, we exclude prostheses, orthoses, and robotic transportation assistance devices owing to space limitations but these areas are also considered important in terms of robotics applications. Finally, we conclude the chapter by discussing challenges facing biomedical robotics. 

An alternative method could be by external means, such as electrically driven motors or inflatable devices the former system will be discussed in this chapter. If necessary the unit building blocks after deployment at LEO would be joined in space by EVA and also any equipment that would be used at GEO would be attached at LEO this would involve either astronauts or specifically designed robots. The completed structure could then be taken, if required, to GEO, by space tug, Wingo (2004), or under its own method of propulsion. The skeletal space structure positioned at 20 km above the Earth would be manufactured in a similar way. This system is described in the chapter. 

Teleoperation has been used to control robots in hostile (nuclear plants and disaster relief) or remote environments (space, underwater, and aerial). In medical robotics, teleoperation achieves the following goals ... 

Rover Self-propelled, robotically operated vehicle used for exploring the surface of a body distant in space. 

Other sensor types include magnetic sensors, sound sensors, accelerometers, and proprioceptive sensors that monitor the robots internal systems and tell them where their own parts are located in space. After robots have collected information through their sensors, algorithms (mathematical processes based on predefined sets of rules) help them process that information intelligently and act on it. For example, a robot may use algorithms to help it... 

Goldin spoke of safety in the agency and that his priorities were first the astronauts who fly in space. Second (but of equal concern) are the people on the groimd who support humans and unmanned missions. Lastly, his are robots. Noting that human spaceflight... 

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