April 20, 2004
Robotic Agents for Extraterrestrial Exploration
NASA has been quietly working on some of the more unusual things to do with robotic agents in terms of reducing the amount of chatter between off-planet exploring astronauts and the teams back here on Earth. The interesting thing is that they are taking a very good incremental development and shakedown approach to all of this.
Posted by elkaim at April 20, 2004 11:52 AMThe goal of the mobile agent software is to blend the extravehicular research conducted by human astronauts with the data management abilities inherent in a computer system.
The first role of an astronaut's personal mobile agent is to simply cut down on the amount of time astronauts take relaying information back to Earth, such as computer readouts or the temperatures of space suits and batteries. Using the agents to control a robot assistant, a landing party could identify interesting locations from the comfort of a habitat module and proceed directly into a scientific investigation.
"People's time is very important on the surface and you don't want to waste it doing reconnaissance," Alena told SPACE.com. "You want astronauts to do targeted surveys, to follow the water and maybe even signs of life."