Robotic in Space

At right we see a press photograph of the Sojourner mobile robot that ultimately explored the surface of Mars. This is more of an R/C car than a robot as it was completely remote controlled from Earth, but NASA calls it a robot so I will too. In any case, the pictures it provided from the Martian surface were breath taking. Sometimes I think that really cool pictures may be NASA's greatest contributions. The deep field images produced by the Hubble telescope are in my opinion some of the greatest wonders of mankind.

The Sojourner is a 6-wheeled vehicle of a rocker bogie design which allows the traverse of obstacles a wheel diameter (13cm) in size. Each wheel is independently actuated and geared (2000:1). The front and rear wheels are independently steerable, providing the capability for the vehicle to turn in place. The vehicle has a top speed of 0.4m/min. It is powered by a 0.22sqm solar panel comprised of 13 strings of 18, 5.5mil GaAs cells each. The normal driving power requirement for the microrover is 10W.

NASA decided to develop a $288-million Flight Telerobotics Servicer (FTS) in 1987 to help astronauts assemble the Space Station, which was growing bigger and more complex with each redesign. Shown here is the winning robot design by Martin Marietta, who received a $297-million contract in May 1989 to develop a vehicle by 1993. About the best thing that can be said for the FTS project was that it generated a lot of lessons learned. The robot never flew and never will fly because it was never completed. This project demonstrated that fault-tolerance gone wild will doom a robot. The robot had so many redundant systems that there was just too much to go wrong.

Source: www.learnaboutrobots.com