ASIMO may be great at delivering coffees, but will it ever make it to the Moon?
Credit: Honda Motor Co., Ltd
Enthusiasm from the United States to resume manned missions to the Moon might have now dampened, but that one small step for a humanoid robot and one giant leap for robot-kind may be closer than we think.
While the U.S. has decided to scrap and eliminate any budget for manned lunar landings, with President Obama addressing NASA by stating, "we have already done that", the Chinese have launched an ambitious plan for a 'taikonaut' (their version of an astronaut or cosmonaut) to walk on the Moon by 2030, to be followed by establishment of a lunar base and a mission to Mars.
The Chinese began to lay the groundwork for their lunar program by launching an unmanned space probe Chang'e-1 (named after the Chinese goddess of the Moon) in October 2007.
After taking numerous high resolution images of the surface, the probe was purposely crashed into the Moon. Chang'e-2 was launched in October 2010, and made the flight to the Moon in a record five days.
Obtaining more data, it was making preparations for the Chang'e-3 flight scheduled for 2013. Both Chang'e-3 and 4 will include a lander and robotic rover. Chang'e 5 in 2017 will include drilling for a lunar rock core sample at a depth of 2 m, and then returning that sample back to the earth.
With an engaged China setting its sights set on the Moon, a glimmer of hope for the U.S. has arisen from NASA's Johnson Space Centre, under the banner of Project M - the audacious goal of putting a humanoid robot on the Moon in a 1,000 days.
For several decades, Japanese corporations such as Honda with its ASIMO robot have been pacing humanoid developments, largely for entertainment applications.
ASIMO has some impressive capabilities including the ability to interact with humans by interpreting their postures and gestures, and then moving in response.
Not only is ASIMO able to follow people, approach and greet them, and differentiate individuals by the facial features, but it has even danced with Ellen DeGeneres. But the Japanese have neglected any real pragmatic applications for ASIMO.
Outside of a few academic research programs, humanoid robot research and development within the U.S. was almost non-existent.
Robots do not need to be humanoid for most applications developed for the military, industry or space arenas. When performing one or two tasks repetitively, there are more optimal configurations for robots to resemble than the human form.
They may be wheeled or tracked unmanned vehicles, or even have multiple legs resembling more like horses, insects or lobsters.
But when robots are designed to perform multiple chores previously done by humans, whether throwing out the trash, walking the dog, or fixing satellites and digging for Moon rocks, it's better to be humanoid.
Yet Matt Ondler, assistant director of applied engineering development at NASA's Johnson Space Centre, located in Houston, Texas, sees humanoid robots as a big part of the future.
"I personally believe humanoid robots will be the iconic technology of this century. A humanoid robot will be to this century what the automobile or television or personal computer was to the last century," he says. "We wanted to put Robonaut on the Moon because it was hard and challenging and would demonstrate our technological prowess in robotics."
