With NASA working on sending humans to Mars starting in the 2030s, colonizing the Red Planet seems more achievable than ever. The space agency is already leading yearlong simulated missions to better understand how living on Mars could affect humans.Because of the planet’s thin atmosphere, high radiation levels, and abrasive dust, people would need to live in specialized dwellings and use robots to perform outdoor tasks.With hopes of inspiring the next generation of engineers and scientists to develop space robots, IEEE held its first Robopalooza, a telepresence competition with robotic demonstrations, in November in Lucerne Valley, Calif. The competition is expected to become an annual event.The contest and demonstrations were held in conjunction with the IEEE Conference on Telepresence at Caltech. The events were organized by IEEE Telepresence, an IEEE Future Directions initiative that aims to advance telepresence technology to help redefine how people live and work.Seven teams from universities and robotics companies worldwide remotely operated a Helelani rover through an obstacle course inspired by the game Capture the Flag. The 318-kilogram vehicle was provided by the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES), an aerospace research center at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. The team that took the least time to retrieve the flag—located on a small hill in the middle of the 400-meter-long course—received US $5,000.Companies and university labs developing space robots demonstrated some of their creations to the more than 300 conference attendees including local preuniversity students.This year’s conference and competition are scheduled to be held in Leiden, Netherlands, from 8 to 10 September. Why humans need robots on MarsScience fiction writers have long explored the idea of people living on another planet, before astronauts even landed on the moon. It’s still a staple of popular series including the Dune, Red Rising, and Star Wars franchises, whose main characters don’t just reside in a galaxy far, far away. Paul Atreides, Darrow O’Lykos, and Luke Skywalker grew up or live on a desert planet much like Mars.Settling the Red Planet is not likely to be easy. Before sending people there, robots would need to build housing. The planet’s atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide. The radiation there would kill human inhabitants in a few months if they weren’t adequately shielded from it. Also, according to NASA, Mars is covered in fine dust particles; breathing in the sharp-edged fragments could damage lungs.Once people inhabit the robot-built dwellings, they would need to use robots to complete outdoor tasks such as geological research, building maintenance, and water mining.Spacecraft aren’t immune to Mars’s dangers, either. The thin atmosphere makes it difficult for rovers to land, as there is minimal air resistance to slow down their descent. The planet’s radiation levels, up to 50 times higher than on Earth, gradually degrade a rover’s erosion-resistant coating, electronic systems, and other components. The abrasive dust also can damage spacecraft.Today’s rovers are slow-moving, averaging a ground speed of about 150 meters per hour on a flat surface, in part because of the 20- to 40-minute delay in communications between Earth and Mars, says Robert Mueller, who organized the telepresence competition. And rovers are expensive: NASA’s latest, Perseverance, cost around $1.7 billion to design and build.Racing robots in the desertWhen choosing a location for the Robopalooza, Mueller found that California’s Mojave Desert, with its hills and soft sand, closely resembled Mars’s topography. Mueller, an IEEE member, is a senior technologist and principal investigator at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, near Cape Canaveral in Florida.The competing teams were located in Australia, Chile, and the United States.A camera mounted on the Helelani rover live-streamed its view to the participants’ computers so they could remotely maneuver the vehicle. The route ended at the top of Peterman Hill. The teams tried to navigate the rover around 14 traffic cones placed randomly along the course. If the rover touched a cone, 10 seconds were added to the team’s final time. If a team wasn’t able to maneuver the rover around a cone, 20 seconds were added.Seven teams—from North Dakota University; SK Godelius; the University of Adelaide, in Australia; the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa; Virginia State University; and Western Australia Remote Operations (WARO32)—competed remotely. The California State Polytechnic University, Ponoma, team competed on-site from a trailer.With a finishing time of 20 minutes and 10 seconds—and no penalties—WARO32 won the competition.“The winning team operated the rover from Perth, Australia, which was 14,800 kilometers from the competition site. They were the team that was farthest away from the vehicle,” Mueller says. “This showcases that telepresence is achievable across Earth and that there is enormous potential for a variety of tasks to be performed using telepresence, such as telemedicine, remote machinery operation, and business and corporate communication.”
Hector, a lunar lander, wears toddler-size Crocs to give it traction and balance.
Preuniversity students try out space robotsAt the IEEE robotic demonstrations, representatives from robotics companies including Honeybee, Cislune, and Neurospace showed off some of their creations. They included a robot that extracts water from rocky soil, a lunar soil excavator, and a cargo vehicle that can adapt to different terrains.Mueller invited nearby teachers to bring their students to the IEEE event. More than 300 elementary, middle, and high school students attended.They had the opportunity to see top robotics companies demonstrate their machines and to play with Hector, a bipedal lunar lander created by two doctoral students from the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles.“Many students and other attendees were inspired by the potential of robotics and telepresence as they watched the robot racing in the Mojave Desert,” Mueller says. “The IEEE Telepresence Initiative is planning to make this competition an annual event, which will take place at remote locations across the world that have extreme conditions, mimicking extraterrestrial planetary surfaces.”
