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Report of the Committee on a Commercially Developed Space Facility (1989) / Chapter Skim
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DIRECT MANNED INTERACTION, AUTOMATION, ROBOTICS, AND TELESCIENCE
Pages 41-46

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From page 41...
... However, the rigor and cost of spaceflight is severely limiting to a human presence, and the practical conduct of science in space must compensate for this limitation. The short history of microgravity research has shown that most experiments benefit greatly from human presence, but, as mentioned earlier, the chief drawback is the accompanying and usually unavoidable degradation of the microgravity environment.
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From page 42...
... When the Space Station era starts in the late 1990s, there will be an opportunity for truly long-term, nearly continuous microgravity exposures, combined with the desired manned presence, and augmented with more advanced telescience. AUTOMATION, ROBOTICS, AND TELESCIENCE Whether performed by a human, a machine, or some combination of the two, most microgravity experiments still require close monitoring and control, over a period ranging from seconds to weeks, of many variables, all of which would obviously differ in number and kind for different experiments.
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From page 43...
... tasks in the laboratory and in the two application areas mentioned above. Human operators, given modest training and current state-of-the-art video devices using remotely controlled pan, tilt, and zoom functions, and current state-of-the-art five or six degree-of-freedom telemanipulators, can easily do requisite observation and manipulation to perform simple assemblies, adjustments, and repairs.
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From page 44...
... Such techniques will allow relatively slow control movements by the human operator, which are nevertheless more satisfactory than having no ability to remotely human-tend the experiment, and in most cases probably are tolerable. In fact, these time delays can be ameliorated through use of computer-based systems that take the operator's control inputs, model the geometry of the task and kinematics of the manipulator, and overlay on the delayed video an undelayed stick figure model of where the hand or end point of the manipulator is predicted to be, thus speeding up the operator's ability to make confident moves.
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From page 45...
... In summary, current A&R/telescience technology can provide any information to a ground-based human observer that a video camera can see; it also can give the observer the ability to activate switches and valves on the space vehicle, reprogram its computers, and perform simple manipulations on the experiment using multiaxis remote manipulators. Eventually, computer-graphic displays with pull-down menus and active cursors may enable the remote human operator to elicit advice from the computer, get unsolicited warnings or other information in an understandable form, and make a variety of reconfigurations in an experiment.
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Key Terms

  • microgravity experiments
  • human operator
  • manned interaction
  • microgravity environment
  • human presence

  • direct manned
  • space flight
  • space station
  • individual experiment
  • perform simple

  • flight center
  • time delays
  • mission specialists
  • video camera
  • operator control

  • using video
  • control movements
  • space shuttle
  • describe microgravity
  • microgravity exposures

  • teleoperated microgravity
  • control loops
  • send control
  • control various
  • slow control

  • experiment using
  • remote human
  • control inputs
  • human observer
  • using multiaxis


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