Image by Patrick Whittemore/Boston Herald
QUITE A RIDE: NERVE Center Director Holly Yanco, above, works at University of Massachusetts Lowell with Val 鈥� short for Valkyrie 鈥� to improve the robot鈥檚 communication skills.
04/07/2016
Boston Herald
By Jordan Graham
Years from now, a robotic astronaut named Val could walk across the dusty Martian terrain to greet a spaceship carrying humans ready to colonize the Red Planet.
How well the robot does that job will fall to some Bay State universities, who are playing a key role in teaching Val how to be an astronaut鈥檚 best friend.
鈥淲hat she will be able to do, hopefully, is just about everything that a suited astronaut in a planetary field could do,鈥� said Kris Ver颅deyen, NASA project manager for Val. 鈥淭his is NASA鈥檚 first foray into a bipedal motion robot, so we鈥檙e basically learning the ropes as we go.鈥�
Val 鈥� short for Valkyrie 鈥� is a 6-foot, 2-inch, 300-pound mass of metal, wires and plastic that was delivered to University of Massachusetts Lowell at 6:30 yesterday morning, along with a squad of NASA engineers, who put together the robot piece by piece.
A team of UMass Lowell and Northeastern University researchers will spend the next two years writing software and algorithms to improve Val鈥檚 walking, hand coordination and communication. The distance from Earth to Mars means any communication with the robot would be significantly delayed, so manually operating Val is impractical.
鈥淓very 20 minutes you can say, 鈥楥heck out panel A,鈥� or, 鈥楻eplace panel A,鈥� and a robot will have to figure out how to do it, have to do it reliably and fast,鈥� said Taskin Padir, a Northeastern professor. 鈥淩obots are still slow and they still need supervision from humans. Our goal is to take steps toward making these systems more autonomous.鈥�
This version of Val 鈥� one of four in the world 鈥� will live at UMass Lowell鈥檚 NERVE Center. One will stay with NASA, while the other two will go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Edinburgh.
Holly Yanco, director of the NERVE Center, said her work will focus on improving Val鈥檚 communication with the humans giving her directions, including knowing how to give relevant information when the robot runs into a problem.
鈥淰al might be able to send back a few short video clips and explain what she鈥檚 been trying to do and maybe what the problem is,鈥� Yanco said. 鈥淩ight now, it doesn鈥檛 have a lot of autonomy, and that鈥檚 some of the stuff we鈥檒l be developing.鈥�
Val looks straight out of science fiction with a black helmet shield, hulking calves and a circle of lights on her chest. The lights are a status sign for people near the robot, but also serve another purpose.
鈥淚f you鈥檙e going to have something working around people, having it not terrify them is probably a good first step,鈥� Verdeyen said. 鈥淥ne of our design goals has always been, this better look cool.鈥�