NASA tests Linux-based planetary surface exploration robots
The K-10 was created by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA’s Ames Research Center, as part of a project to build exploration rovers for future robotic missions to the moon and to Mars. The K-10 is a lunar test-bed “used primarily for human robot interaction research,” according to NASA. It has four steerable wheels, and can travel at human walking speeds.
The K-10 uses commercial off-the-shelf parts where possible, in order to save cost and promote maintainability. The robot rover’s control and communications system is based on an IBM Thinkpad X31 with Intel Pentium M processor clocked at 1.4GHz.
The K-10’s control laptop attaches to various robotic subsystems via standard PC interfaces. NASA says that a fundamental architectural goal was to use only “highly scalable, expandable, and hot-pluggable” interfaces, such as USB, Ethernet, and Firewire, in order to reduce cables to the laptop and promote scalability, among other benefits.
The K-10 runs Red Hat Linux, which NASA says was chosen for its large user base and application compatibility. Additionally, NASA notes that, “Linux’s flexibility and scalability enable us to easily add, remove, and extend devices with minimal difficulty.”
The K-10 is controlled wirelessly, via a PCMCIA-based 802.11g interface connected to an 8db 2.4GHz antenna via an RF cable. The control application runs on the control laptop as a single, multi-threaded userspace application. Real-time performance is not required, NASA says, because real-time tasks such as fine-grained motor control are offloaded to a distributed network of microcontroller-powered control boards. [More here|pics]