ESA’s force-feedback rover Interact is controlled one nation away

Author: EIS Release Date: Oct 21, 2020


In a dress rehearsal for a robotic test campaign on the Moon-like volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, scheduled for next year, researchers at the European Space Agency (ESA) have been testing its rover, dubbed Interact.

ESA’s force-feedback rover Interact is controlled one nation away

Demonstrating its remote control abilities, a controller in Germany operated ESA’s gripper-equipped Interact around a simulated moonscape at the European Agency’s centre in the Netherlands.

They were practising retrieving geological samples inside the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, South Holland.

The idea is that, in the future, astronauts aboard the Lunar Gateway (an eventual replacement for the International Space Station) will be able to operate rovers down on the surface of the Moon, using force-feedback controls.

It will be “like a high-end gaming joystick that pushes back on its user – to experience a realistic sense of touch comparable to actually being there” says ESA.

“Our original plan was to follow up Analog-1 [test programme] with a genuine geological field survey, on Mount Etna in Italy,” said ESA robotic engineer Thomas Krueger, heading the HRI Lab. This survey was planned as part of DLR’s ARCHES – Autonomous Robotic Networks to Help Modern Societies – initiative, to develop heterogeneous, autonomous and interconnected robotic systems in the context of a real application.”

“Unfortunately ongoing COVID-19 restrictions make this impossible for now. Instead we had the idea of bringing the rovers together on a virtual basis: we set up a common network infrastructure to make them think they are together even though they are not – like a robotic version of a teleconference – to be a full-scale dress rehearsal for our Mount Etna trip which has now been rescheduled for next summer.”

The lifting of a sample in a gripper hand is pictured below.

The Interact rover has two cameras, one mounted on a manoeuvrable arm and the other on the gripper at the end of another arm.

Specifically, a controller at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen in Weßling, Germany, operated ESA’s gripper-equipped Interact rover, to practice retrieving geological samples.

You can see the remote rover operator at DLR in the image below. The rover is steered using a joystick, seen left, with a Sigma 7 force-feedback device with six degrees of freedom used to manipulate its gripper arm.

At the same time, a smaller Germany-based rover interacted with ESA’s rover as if they were together at the same site, as a further test.