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Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble Space Telescope Final Report (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix D: State of the Art in Robotics
Pages 126-129

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 126...
... Teleoperated robots have been used effectively by human operators to augment their skills or to be able to operate in remote, usually hazardous or inaccessible, environments. For example, the manipulators used on the International Space Station (ISS)
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From page 127...
... However, much of the high-level reasoning and decision making is done by the remote human users, albeit infrequently because of the time delays associated with communication between the rovers and mission control on Earth. For example, remote human users set the science objectives (e.g., on which rock to place an instrument)
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From page 128...
... Further, enabling those autonomous operations requires an extensive, dedicated research and development program, which begins in the laboratory and culminates in field demonstrations before actual deployment on a mission. For the MER rovers, autonomous navigation was identified as having significant mission benefits and was achieved only after years of focused research and development, such as identifying obstacles using computer vision and relative state estimation using wheel, inertial, and optical sensors.
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From page 129...
... The ETS VII mission demonstrated autonomous rendezvous and capture of a target satellite. However, in this demonstration, the target was specially designed for capture, with appropriate fiduciaries for relative orientation, positioning, and capture.
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Key Terms

  • human operator
  • robotic arms
  • human users
  • time delays
  • robotic servicing

  • remote human
  • teleoperated robots
  • human operators
  • communication link
  • servicing mission

  • delays associated
  • multilink robotic
  • shop floor
  • angle sensors
  • follow safe

  • successful examples
  • onboard computers
  • usually hazardous
  • robots typically
  • autonomous operation

  • oil industry
  • robot directly
  • involving manipulation
  • mission demonstrated
  • commands sent

  • robotic arm
  • robot sensors
  • arm attached
  • obstacles using
  • decisionmaking capabilities


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