Experiments with an EVA Assistant Robot

Human missions to the Moon or Mars will likely be accompanied by many useful robots that will assist in all aspects of the mission, from construction to maintenance to surface exploration. Such robots might scout terrain, carry tools, take pictures, curate samples, or provide status information during a traverse. At NASA/JSC, the EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA) project has developed a robot testbed for exploring the issues of astronaut-robot interaction. Together with JSC's Advanced Spacesuit Lab, the ERA team has been developing robot capabilities and testing them with space-suited test subjects at planetary surface analog sites. In this paper, we describe the current state of the ERA testbed and two weeks of remote field tests in Arizona in September 2002. A number of teams with a broad range of interests participated in these experiments to explore different aspects of what must be done to develop a program for robotic assistance to surface EVA. Technologies explored in the field experiments included a fuel cell, new mobility platform and manipulator, novel software and communications infrastructure for multi-agent modeling and planning, a mobile science lab, an "InfoPak" for monitoring the spacesuit, and delayed satellite communication to a remote operations team. In this paper, we will describe this latest round of field tests in detail.