Putting the pieces together

The three robots were Bert and Rollin’ Justin from DLR and ESA’s Interact rover. With those at his hands, Marcus went to work by looking for three objects with the little robot dog Bert, using the cameras on Bert and on Rollin’ Justin. The footage from Bert and Justin gave him an overview of the scene.

After successfully finding two aliens and a doll, he moved on to the next task: getting a peg in a hole with two robots working together. With both the Interact Rover and Rollin’ Justin having an arm on the peg, Marcus made sure Rollin’ Justin allowed the Interact rover arm to steer the peg in the hole, while Rollin’ Justin supported the peg. Getting the two robots to work together was no problem for Marcus, and he manoeuvred the peg into the hole using the arm of the Interact Rover.

Lastly, he used Rollin’ Justin to lift a handle, a task that might seem easy for a human, but for a robot it is not a simple one. The handle is attached at the end, so if Rollin’ Justin just lifted the handle straight up, the robot would lose the grip of the handle, since it would rotate away from Rollin’ Justin. After some small technical difficulties were ironed out by the Surface Avatar team in real time, Marcus managed to lift and lower the handle.

The experiment ended with Marcus providing valuable feedback to the Surface Avatar team, so they can improve the interface and pave the way for future sessions.

“Now it is time to go over all the feedback Marcus provided. It was a successful run of Surface Avatar and it is clear that Marcus has experience with working on new and unfamiliar equipment” said Dr. Neal Lii, Domain Head at DLR’s Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics.