November 5th, 2007
- Wrote protocols for handling some potential problems with the robots, which can be found here on the Protocols page.
- Also wrote a basic set of commands for the robots for use during the scouting phase, which can be found here.
October 22nd, 2007
- On Saturday, October 20th, the Robot-Earthteam team met with representatives of all the other teams except Resource Management in order to test our protocols for the initial robotic exploration of the landing site. At this meeting, we came to the following decisions:
- The first set of four robots will be designed specifically as scouts, and will have no significant interaction with the astronauts after they land. The robots will have several types of remote sensor, and will be able to place a variety of radio beacons, but will carry nothing else. These scout robots will be sent far enough in advance to map out the target area with a reasonable level of detail. We guessed that they should be sent a year in advance.
The robots will be launched in two sets of two. This approach was decided on both for redundancy, so that some robots will survive even in case of a rocket malfunction, and because it is unlikely that more than two robots would fit on an Ares V rocket. Weight constraints may even push the number of robots per launch down to one, but this should not interfere with the exploration protocol. Each robot will land individually on the Moon in a soft-lander, which will contain a targeting beacon so that later robots will be more likely to land in the same area.
After landing, the robots will map the area, place LPS beacons, and mark particularly interesting (as determined by Earth) outcrops with small radio beacons. After mapping the area, they will plant a lander-targeting beacon at a site decided by Earth, so as to give the landing astronauts a known-safe target to shoot for while landing. The robots will then head off on other missions, likely unrelated to the astronauts' mission.
Additional robots will be sent with the astronauts as field assistants. The capabilities of these robots have not yet been decided, but the Robot-Astronaut Interaction Team has decided that it is primarily in charge of these robots.
- With regards to the organization of the simulation, we decided that there may not be much purpose in having an actual human acting as each robot, at least in the pre-mission simulation. Because the robots' roles are little more than "I went here, I found this", we decided that they may be better implemented as an AI, or someone from the DM team, in a chat room, than as actual humans walking around the room. This idea will not be put into practice on Tuesday's (Oct. 23) simulation, but we should have it tested, and hopefully finalized, before the next simulation after this.
- Also discussed were several possible reorganizations of the placement of Mission Control and the astronauts within Decision Theater. The one that seemed to have the best reaction was to place Mission Control in the conference room with half-a-dozen projectors attached to peoples' laptops displaying information such as the astronaut's oxygen usage and the communication logs from the robots, in order to better simulate the amount of information readily available in the real Mission Control. Once again, these ideas will not be implemented on Tuesday (Oct. 23), but they should be mentioned in class and/or on the blog within the next week.
- Finally, we noticed that by having a small group (about eight people- all of the REIT and one person from each other group) gather together with no time limit to test out a section of the mission script, we were able to accomplish far more than we ever have in-class.
October 13th, 2007
- Collaborated with a member of the Science team to create a script for the landing and initial exploration of the robot scouts that will arrive before the astronauts. This script can be found on the Protocols Page.
- Re-wrote underlying code for the site to fall more in line with the website guidelines developed by the website team. Unfortunately, the redesign lead to some orphaned pages, namely the Team Reponsibilities page. This situation will be remedied sometime soon.
October 3rd, 2007
- Posted an argument in favor of assigning the robots to directly aid the astronauts, rather than run off independently, and in favor of giving the astronauts direct control over the robots. It can be found here.
- Listed team goals for the Oct. 4 simulation on the Blackboard "discussion board". They can be found here.
- Collaborated with Robot-Astronaut Team on a preliminary list of commands for the robot, which can be found here.