Simulating an Extraterrestrial Environment for Robotic Space Exploration: the Meteron Supvis-justin Telerobotic Experiment and the Solex Proving Ground

This paper presents the on-going development for the Supvis-Justin experiment lead by DLR, together with ESA, planned for 2016. It is part of the ESA initiated Meteron telerobotics experiment suite aimed to study different forms of telerobotics solutions for space applications. Supvis-Justin studies the user interface design, and supervised autonomy aspects of telerobotics, as well as teleoperated tasks for a humanoid robot by teleoperating a dexterous robot on earth (located at DLR) from the International Space Station (ISS) with the use of a tablet PC. In addition to giving an overview of the Supvis-Justin experiment, this paper focuses on the development of a simulated extraterrestrial planetary environment to be constructed at DLR. The SOLar Farm EXperimental Space Robotics Validation (Solex) environment aims to help collect relevant data to improve future space robotic mission designs. The Solex environment, which simulates a solar farm built on an extraterrestrial site, is intended to be equipped with modular components for the testing of visual, electrical, and mechanical robot-environment interaction. Furthermore, local intelligence built into the Solex environment, together with modular components enables flexible reconfiguration. This provides the possibility for a holistic investigative catalog of space robotic tasks in an extraterrestrial environment. Current progress of the development and testing for Supvis-Justin and Solex, as well as the steps going forward, are also presented.