DENVER (KDVR) — Students at the University of Colorado Boulder are preparing to explore the moon from the comfort of an earthbound room, after designing a robot that can take them to the moon’s surface via virtual reality.
The student-built robot could help shape the future of lunar exploration — even though it currently lives in a quiet, carpeted office, the university said in a press release.
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In its current state, the robot nicknamed “Armstrong” is a three-wheeled robot that uses a mechanical arm to pick up and move plastic rocks. An exercise that could potentially develop into a system where robots are controlled on the moon by the use of a “digital twin,” which is a hyper-realistic virtual reality environment.
“That’s what is really exciting about this—you’re able to simulate everything in the environment, from the shadows to the texture of the dirt, and then train operators on conditions that are as close to real as possible,” said Xavier O’Keefe, a master’s student in aerospace engineering sciences. “That way, once you get to the moon, you have a higher chance of success.”
O’Keefe has been working on the project since he was studying as an undergraduate student at the university.
The robot study was funded by NASA and a Colorado-based company called Lunar Outpost.
The project is led by CU astrophysics professor emeritus and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy’s Jack Burns.
Burns is part of a team that received a grant from NASA to design FarView, which is a proposed moon observatory, covering 77 square miles and requiring robots to install thousands of antennas, according to the university.
As part of the new study, students replicated their lab environment in a video game engine and gauged the performance of people controlling robots who had been trained in VR versus those who hadn’t.
The study concluded that students who had trained with the digital twin were able to complete tasks 30% faster and were less stressed while doing so.
To take one more step towards complete function, the team will begin research on how dust may affect the robots by creating a simulation of the moon’s surface.
O’Keefe said it is a small step, but one that’s bringing humanity closer to walking and rolling on the moon again.
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