Robotic Software Used by NASA

Cut­ting-edge soft­ware tech­nol­o­gy is essen­tial to the suc­cess of NASA’s mis­sions. As a result, NASA draws on coop­er­a­tive research and devel­op­ment efforts with lead­ers in acad­e­mia and indus­try to solve its most press­ing soft­ware issues.

Recent joint efforts between NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry and Carnegie Mel­lon lead to an upgrade of NASA’s Mars Rover, Oppor­tu­ni­ty. The rover, which was designed for only a few months of explo­ration, has proven extreme­ly resilient. Ten years after its launch, Oppor­tu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to tra­verse the com­plex ter­rain of Mars. With out­dat­ed soft­ware, the rover was only able to think one step in advance. It was able to turn to avoid obsta­cles, but if a sec­ond obsta­cle was pre­sent­ed, it would turn again. This became par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic when the rover was dri­ven into dead-end or cul-de-sac areas. The rover would con­tin­u­ous­ly loop back on itself until human oper­a­tors helped it escape. To solve the prob­lem, NASA turned to Carnegie Mel­lon for autonomous indus­tri­al indus­tri­al nav­i­ga­tion soft­ware. Tech­nol­o­gy that had been devel­oped and used to con­trol a num­ber of mobile robots at Carnegie Mel­lon was tai­lored for the old­er proces­sors onboard Oppor­tu­ni­ty and was then inte­grat­ed into the Mars Explo­ration Rover soft­ware. The new soft­ware allows the rover to build a large-scale map of the ter­rain it encoun­ters. In addi­tion, the robot has a mem­o­ry of how it got where it is and the abil­i­ty to retrace steps or plot new paths.

Anoth­er such part­ner­ship is an agree­ment between NASA’s Ames Research Cen­ter and M2Mi Corp to advance ​‘auto­mat­ed machine-to-machine intel­li­gence’ for space mis­sions. M2Mi Corp has devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy that inter­con­nects machines and pro­vides a stan­dard way for them to exchange infor­ma­tion. NASA hopes that the coop­er­a­tive effort will enable NASA’s com­put­ers, space­craft, and robots to be aware of their sur­round­ings, make their own deci­sions, and effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er. In return, NASA’s part­ner­ship and cul­ti­va­tion of M2Mi Corp’s tech­nol­o­gy is intend­ed to lead to a spin off that will ben­e­fit indus­try. In the future, such M2M tech­nol­o­gy could enable the com­po­nents of an auto­mat­ed fac­to­ry to com­mu­ni­cate and make nec­es­sary adjust­ments to increase efficiency.

Robots​.com is sup­port­ive of space explo­ration and is excit­ed to see how robot­ics con­tin­ue to be used for space mis­sions. Robot­ic soft­ware is used for a wide vari­ety of indus­tri­al automa­tion also. If you would like more infor­ma­tion on inte­grat­ing robot­ic soft­ware, con­tact Robots​.com online or at 877−762−6881.