I think that possibly as soon as a decade or two from now, we will seldom spacesuits for most of those, but have humans in orbit exploring from orbit via telepresence units on the ground.
I think the main thing that needs to happen here is progress in making robots that can move like a human being. In games players are already able to do just about everything they can in real life by controlling avatars. But it's not yet possible to do that when controlling robots. Once we have robots that can move more like humans, then why send humans to these dangerous places?
So many advantages. In case of Mars, then it prevents contamination with Earth life.
With all of them then you don't have to land humans on the surface - often the most dangerous step of the mission.
Gets rid of the need for the clumsy spacesuit. Avatars could be built as flexible as a human. For that matter they could be built to any scale. You could control a tiny avatar to explore inside a small cave, or a huge strong avatar to do things no human could do, lift up things that weigh many tons.
The avatars on the surface can be powered with solar panels, or similar. No need to carry food and oxygen with them wherever they go. And can be powered down, or left to do some routine task. Many problems of logistics that you have with human explorers - needing vehicles with oxygen and food etc wherever they go - they no longer apply when you control avatars.
You can hop instantly, "teleport" from one avatar to another. And experience it in HD 3D like the Oculus Rift.
The humans stay inside a spaceship in a safe "shirtsleeves" environment which can be shielded from cosmic radiation, and protected from micrometeorites.
Or they may live underground on the body they are exploring, or may live inside one of its moons, or may live in a Stanford Torus type habitat once we are well advanced with space technology.
They can live wherever they like so long as it is nearby. For that matter, can also live in environments rotating for artificial gravity (tether or centrifuge) at whatever g level they find most comfortable.
Everything you see and do is automatically streamed, because that is how you control the robot. So you can, if you want, record everything, or stream it back to Earth. If something goes wrong you can go over the footage and see exactly what happened. Also you may not notice something while exploring but a keen person back on Earth might go through your footage and make a new discovery that way, so with citizen science, just as we can nowadays make discoveries in orbital photos of the planets and telescopic images of the stars - in future we'd be able to do that from going through and reliving the adventures of these avatars controlled from orbit.
Automatically have digitally enhanced vision (if desired). E.g. can set it to show the skies of Mars as blue and the rocks lit as for a sunny day on Earth. That's how the images from Mars are usually processed anyway to help geologists identify rocks. But it's also much more pleasant as a working environment for humans (many of us get slightly depressed when the surroundings are gray and dull and you can hardly distinguish any colours, as would be the situation in a Mars landscape without digital enhancement).
And - you experience the surface more directly than you do in person on the surface, in some ways. Because you are no longer encumbered by the spacesuit - and so can just look around you as you can normally on Earth. And you can see better with your enhanced vision, and at least potentially once it is all sorted out, could feel things better with haptic feedback than you could with spacesuit gloves.
I can see so many advantages to this. Main issue is that robots are still not as flexible as humans. Look at Asimo for instance, it really can't move like a human. Robots can't walk freely like us. The best robot hands are approaching the capabilities of a human hand. But they've got a bit of a way to go.
On the other side, with the likes of Kinekt etc, the control interface is already pretty much sorted out for games.
We can however build robots already if we don't require them to be totally human. For instance, instead of walking on two legs - build them to move around on wheels or "whegs". And control them by walking around on an omnidirectional treadmill - which nowadays can be made really small, easy to fit in a spaceship. So you just walk on the treadmill and the robot moves in whatever direction you walk - but not copying your leg movements, your legs just control the direction and speed. That's a method already used for computer games, should work just fine.
Then your robot could just have a couple of arms at the front which you can control, with haptic feedback. This sort of system, I think, we could have in place within a decade or two. We could do it already indeed - and it would already quite possibly be better than exploring with humans.
Some time back the HERRO study for Mars concluded that one human crew in orbit could do as much research as three crew on the surface. There was nothing particular about Mars in their analysis. Same would apply for the Moon for instance. Where the humans could be in a lunar cave or in orbit. Once you take account of the clumsiness of a spacesuit, and the time needed to put it on and take it off again, and the ability to "teleport" between different avatars and to leave one of them to continue doing an experiment while you control another one - even with present day technology you can end up with the robots accomplishing more than humans would on the surface.
I'd like to see this explored in real life and not just in theory. There are several experiments underway to test this, with humans on the ground testing avatars in the ISS and vice versa. Maybe for instance in the near future ISS repairs will be done mainly in this way, and it will also be used for satellite repairs etc.
To start with we can do this from the Earth using "artificial real time". Not quite as fast as humans operating by telepresence from orbit.
I agree that it helps if we can also add in a bit of autonomy and robustness (e.g. whegs instead of wheels, detection of tip and automatically stops if it encounters problems, can't turn itself over or get stuck easily). But doesn't have to be full AI type autonomy. I don't think myself that we can achieve mechanical AIs with equivalent capability to humans (am skeptic on that) - at least not based on programming.
But - with all that I think we'd be able to drive pretty fast with 12 to 40 minutes light speed delay.
More about this all here Yes, I totally agree, have (which I plan to make into an article for my Science20 blog some time soon).
I think the main thing that needs to happen here is progress in making robots that can move like a human being. In games players are already able to do just about everything they can in real life by controlling avatars. But it's not yet possible to do that when controlling robots. Once we have robots that can move more like humans, then why send humans to these dangerous places?
So many advantages. In case of Mars, then it prevents contamination with Earth life.
With all of them then you don't have to land humans on the surface - often the most dangerous step of the mission.
Gets rid of the need for the clumsy spacesuit. Avatars could be built as flexible as a human. For that matter they could be built to any scale. You could control a tiny avatar to explore inside a small cave, or a huge strong avatar to do things no human could do, lift up things that weigh many tons.
The avatars on the surface can be powered with solar panels, or similar. No need to carry food and oxygen with them wherever they go. And can be powered down, or left to do some routine task. Many problems of logistics that you have with human explorers - needing vehicles with oxygen and food etc wherever they go - they no longer apply when you control avatars.
You can hop instantly, "teleport" from one avatar to another. And experience it in HD 3D like the Oculus Rift.
The humans stay inside a spaceship in a safe "shirtsleeves" environment which can be shielded from cosmic radiation, and protected from micrometeorites.
Or they may live underground on the body they are exploring, or may live inside one of its moons, or may live in a Stanford Torus type habitat once we are well advanced with space technology.
They can live wherever they like so long as it is nearby. For that matter, can also live in environments rotating for artificial gravity (tether or centrifuge) at whatever g level they find most comfortable.
Everything you see and do is automatically streamed, because that is how you control the robot. So you can, if you want, record everything, or stream it back to Earth. If something goes wrong you can go over the footage and see exactly what happened. Also you may not notice something while exploring but a keen person back on Earth might go through your footage and make a new discovery that way, so with citizen science, just as we can nowadays make discoveries in orbital photos of the planets and telescopic images of the stars - in future we'd be able to do that from going through and reliving the adventures of these avatars controlled from orbit.
Automatically have digitally enhanced vision (if desired). E.g. can set it to show the skies of Mars as blue and the rocks lit as for a sunny day on Earth. That's how the images from Mars are usually processed anyway to help geologists identify rocks. But it's also much more pleasant as a working environment for humans (many of us get slightly depressed when the surroundings are gray and dull and you can hardly distinguish any colours, as would be the situation in a Mars landscape without digital enhancement).
And - you experience the surface more directly than you do in person on the surface, in some ways. Because you are no longer encumbered by the spacesuit - and so can just look around you as you can normally on Earth. And you can see better with your enhanced vision, and at least potentially once it is all sorted out, could feel things better with haptic feedback than you could with spacesuit gloves.
I can see so many advantages to this. Main issue is that robots are still not as flexible as humans. Look at Asimo for instance, it really can't move like a human. Robots can't walk freely like us. The best robot hands are approaching the capabilities of a human hand. But they've got a bit of a way to go.
On the other side, with the likes of Kinekt etc, the control interface is already pretty much sorted out for games.
We can however build robots already if we don't require them to be totally human. For instance, instead of walking on two legs - build them to move around on wheels or "whegs". And control them by walking around on an omnidirectional treadmill - which nowadays can be made really small, easy to fit in a spaceship. So you just walk on the treadmill and the robot moves in whatever direction you walk - but not copying your leg movements, your legs just control the direction and speed. That's a method already used for computer games, should work just fine.
Then your robot could just have a couple of arms at the front which you can control, with haptic feedback. This sort of system, I think, we could have in place within a decade or two. We could do it already indeed - and it would already quite possibly be better than exploring with humans.
Some time back the HERRO study for Mars concluded that one human crew in orbit could do as much research as three crew on the surface. There was nothing particular about Mars in their analysis. Same would apply for the Moon for instance. Where the humans could be in a lunar cave or in orbit. Once you take account of the clumsiness of a spacesuit, and the time needed to put it on and take it off again, and the ability to "teleport" between different avatars and to leave one of them to continue doing an experiment while you control another one - even with present day technology you can end up with the robots accomplishing more than humans would on the surface.
I'd like to see this explored in real life and not just in theory. There are several experiments underway to test this, with humans on the ground testing avatars in the ISS and vice versa. Maybe for instance in the near future ISS repairs will be done mainly in this way, and it will also be used for satellite repairs etc.
To start with we can do this from the Earth using "artificial real time". Not quite as fast as humans operating by telepresence from orbit.
I agree that it helps if we can also add in a bit of autonomy and robustness (e.g. whegs instead of wheels, detection of tip and automatically stops if it encounters problems, can't turn itself over or get stuck easily). But doesn't have to be full AI type autonomy. I don't think myself that we can achieve mechanical AIs with equivalent capability to humans (am skeptic on that) - at least not based on programming.
But - with all that I think we'd be able to drive pretty fast with 12 to 40 minutes light speed delay.
More about this all here Yes, I totally agree, have (which I plan to make into an article for my Science20 blog some time soon).
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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