{"id":4384,"date":"2020-01-20T11:56:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T16:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/?p=4384"},"modified":"2020-08-17T17:32:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:32:57","slug":"watch-astrobees-first-autonomous-flight-on-the-international-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/2020\/01\/20\/watch-astrobees-first-autonomous-flight-on-the-international-space-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Astrobee&#8217;s First Autonomous Flight on the International Space Station"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>from <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/space-robots\/watch-astrobees-first-autonomous-flight-on-the-international-space-station?utm_campaign=roboticsnews-10-22-19&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=roboticsnews&amp;mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTjJSak9HWXlaR00zWVdReiIsInQiOiIxNXMrS0dkaUxGWWlZUGRPTGI4VEVXbGhJXC9KaGVkUEozNTdCR3UyQkVJcHpaamRaU0RNcEttSlpZRUFCZmErRnpvWjIyQlQ3dnc1M2dtOTRwbjlETFBVNHZKRFRVN2trRUFLT2dNaWRiMElzVW11RjRnMFpiMkpXQUxpM3pnbksifQ%3D%3D\">IEEE Spectrum<\/a><br>Oct 9, 2019<br>by Evan Ackerman<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NASA&#039;s Astrobee Robot First Free Flight in Space\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hk-1j3sXTqA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p> NASA\u2019s Astrobee robots have come a long, long way since <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/space-robots\/how-nasa-astrobee-robot-is-bringing-useful-autonomy-to-the-iss\">we first met them at NASA Ames back in 2017<\/a>. In fact, they\u2019ve made it all the way to the International Space Station: <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/space-robots\/nasa-launching-astrobee-robots-to-iss-tomorrow\">Bumble, Honey, and Queen Bee are up there right now<\/a>.  While Honey and Queen Bee are still packed away in a case (and quite  unhappy about it, I would imagine), Bumble has been buzzing around,  getting used to its new home. To be ready to fly solo, all Bumble needed  was some astronaut-assisted mapping of its environment, and last month,  the little robotic cube finally embarked on its first fully autonomous  ISS adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> We cut together the above video from about an hour\u2019s worth of raw  footage (without audio) of Astrobee testing, which\u00a0took place in the  Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), also known as Kibo,\u00a0on the ISS on <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nasa.gov\/stationreport\/2019\/08\/28\/iss-daily-summary-report-8282019\/\">August 28<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Astro_Christina\">Astronaut Christina Koch<\/a>  had been working with roboticists at NASA Ames on earlier Astrobee  start-up activities, which hadn\u2019t gone as perfectly as everyone hoped  they would, and was (understandably) excited that the robot was able to  successfully fly itself though the JEM. Christina and another astronaut,  off camera in the Harmony node attached to the JEM, do a little dance  to celebrate (with what is now officially the \u201cAstrobee Jig,\u201d we\u2019re  told), and apparently Astrobee now has a standing invitation to join in  on all future ISS dance parties.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Astrobee\u2019s goal for its first autonomous mission was to undock \nitself, follow a flight plan consisting of a list of waypoints and \nobjectives that was uploaded to the robot from the ground, and then \nreturn to the dock. All of this was done without any direct intervention\n from the ground controllers or from the astronauts. As you can see in \nthe video, Christina is mostly just following Bumble around as it does \nits thing, keeping out of the way of the navigation camera but otherwise\n just making sure the robot didn\u2019t get into any trouble.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Astrobee flies itself<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So far, the difficult part for Astrobee has been getting its \nlocalization to work robustly. While the robot does navigate visually, \nit\u2019s dependent on preexisting maps rather than doing <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Simultaneous_localization_and_mapping\">SLAM<\/a>.\n Putting together those initial maps involved hand-carrying Bumble \naround the JEM to collect images, which were then processed offline \n(back on Earth) to identify features in the images and correlate them \nwith locations to build up the map that Bumble uses to navigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With maps like these, you have to find the right mix of features to \ninclude for navigation to work optimally. If your maps are too rich in \nfeatures, there will be too much data for your robot to manage, and if \nthe maps are too sparse, the robot won\u2019t be able to localize accurately.\n This was a little bit tricky for Astrobee, as&nbsp;deputy group lead&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ti.arc.nasa.gov\/profile\/mbualat\/\">Maria Bualat<\/a>&nbsp;from&nbsp;the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames&nbsp;explained to us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>It turned out that our maps needed to be richer. We tried to \ncull them down to make them fast and efficient, but we weren\u2019t keeping \nenough features to enable the robot to localize robustly, so it would \nget lost a lot. During some of our earlier activities when we were \ntrying to fly even basic motions, the robot would tend to drift as it \nwould lose lock. This last activity that we had was great, because it \nwas our first time using the more enriched map, and the localization \nworked really well. It was kind of nice because [Christina] saw us \nthrough those struggles\u2014she saw how tough it was to get the robot to \nfly.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Besides this little bit of software optimization, Bualat says that \nAstrobee has been working well, without any other software issues or \nhardware issues of any kind. This is impressive for any robot, and \nespecially so for a robot that was developed entirely on the ground and \nis now being used in space. And as for the astronauts whose job it is to\n test Astrobee, it sounds like they\u2019re actually having some fun with it.\n There was a bit of concern initially that Astrobee\u2019s impellers would be\n overly loud, but that might be a feature rather than a bug, as Bualat \nexplains: \u201cWe\u2019ve asked them if they found it noisy or annoying, and they\n said no\u2014in fact, they said that you can certainly hear it, but they \nactually liked it because it means that Astrobee can\u2019t sneak up on \nthem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Astrobee will be continuing its commissioning activities over the \nnext few months, which includes tuning Bumble so that it can fly as \nrobustly as possible. For example, Astrobee needs to be able to navigate\n if an astronaut moves in front of its navigation camera, blocking some \nof the view. Bumble will then get its <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/preview\/automaton\/robotics\/space-robots\/nasa-launching-astrobee-robots-to-iss-tomorrow\">perching arm<\/a>\n installed and tested, after which the goal is to start working with \nsome of the science payloads, like a gecko gripper, a RFID tracker, and a\n microphone array, which you can read more about <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/space-robots\/nasa-launching-astrobee-robots-to-iss-tomorrow\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/space-robots\/robonaut-and-astrobee-to-will-work-together-on-iss\">here<\/a>.\n Honey and Queen still need to go through their own start-up tests and \ncalibrations, and Maria Bualat says the goal is to have multiple \nAstrobees buzzing around the ISS together \u201cnot too far in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from IEEE SpectrumOct 9, 2019by Evan Ackerman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4620,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4384\/revisions\/4620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}