Luca Parmitano, an astronaut belonging to the European Space Agency’s ESA, succeeded in remotely controlling a ground rover from the International Space Station ISS.
This experiment assumes remote control of a rover to be seen on the moon from a future lunar gateway space station or lunar base. In this experiment, called Analog-1, a ground rover is remotely controlled from an ISS rotating orbit at a speed of 28,800 km/h and driven through checkpoints installed at three locations while avoiding obstacles that assume the moon. Meanwhile, a six-axis robotic arm was used to retrieve objects on the ground. In the experiment conducted on November 18, it is said that all movements were completed within 30 minutes of the one-hour experiment. Experiments will continue to be conducted with different operational objectives set.
Remote control of the Moon Rover at lunar bases and lunar gateways is expected to experience a delay of several seconds. However, considering the danger of an astronaut flying directly to the moon or taking hours to prepare for outboard activities, it can be said that it is quite advantageous to increase the degree of freedom for robotic exploration and make it applicable to work.
ESA said in this experiment that the combination of the astronaut and the robot system had high adaptability, and the force feedback mechanism was added to the robot arm and the controller handled by the aviator, and the astronauts could also feel the pressure felt by the robot arm. Also, in the case of planetary missions farther than the moon, the communication delay time becomes too large because the distance is very far. In the case of Mars, for example, since it takes about 6 minutes for radio waves to travel back and forth, rovers that send to celestial bodies farther than the moon need an autonomous driving function such as Curiosity. Related information can be found here .