South African company Ryonic Robotics is currently busy developing its entry in the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) Space Centennial Challenge competition. Ryonic was downselected by Nasa last month as one of the teams from around the world allowed to participate in the competition. “Being accepted into the challenge is a big opportunity for us,” enthuses Ryonic lead roboticist Rick Montgomery. “We only started designing our own robots two years ago. Now we’re exporting robots. We’re growing fast.”

“Ryan [Beech – company founder, MD and chief coboticist] entered us into the competition,” explains Montgomery. “It’s obviously a very exciting challenge, and we’ll learn a lot, which is our aim. But another aim is to encourage students to study robotics at tertiary level. Our company provides holiday work for a couple of students interested in robotics; usually they come from a mechatronic or electronic background.”

The Space Centennial Challenge is connected with Nasa’s long-term Mars manned-mission project. The focus is on improving humanoid robots, making them effective instruments in space exploration. “The intent behind this challenge is to spur the development of cooperation between robots like this and human astronauts,” he elucidates. “Either the robots would be deployed to Mars first and prepare things for the astronauts or they would deploy and work together.”

All the teams will be using the same basic humanoid robot, the Valkyrie (sometimes also called the Robonaut R5), which was developed by Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre engineering directorate. Each team is being supplied with a full virtual model of the robot. They will thus not be working with hardware but with software and computer modelling and simulation, constrained by the limits to the mechanical and system capabilities of the real robot. “We have to programme the virtual robot to execute the three challenges in the competition. The challenge scenario is that the robot is operating on Mars,” he reports.

The first challenge is to programme the robot so that it successfully realigns a communications array (which, by implication, has somehow lost its alignment). The second challenge is to programme the robot to repair a solar panel array, which could involve replacing photovoltaic cells, and clean it (Mars experiences both dust devils and sandstorms, the latter sometimes being on a planetary scale). The third challenge is to programme the robot to identify and repair an air leak in a habitat.

All the teams have to use a standardised software platform, called Gazebo, along with the robotic operating software, which is unimaginatively called ROS. Each team – and contestants must be teams – is limited to about six members. The Ryonic team is Beech (team manager), Montgomery (team leader), JD Gouws (software), Dave Russel (software), Patrick Nkwari (electronics) and Jeandré du Plessis (mechanics and dynamics). Although the robot will be virtual, the input from the electronics and mechanics and dynamics specialists will be essential to get a realistic result. Moreover, the Valkyrie robot has 44° of freedom (turning, bending, reaching, grabbing, manipulating, and so on), and every aspect of the robot has to be incorporated into the simulation, including the movements of individual fingers and the ankles. On top of this, Mars has to be simulated, in three dimensions, to provide the environment in which the simulated robot will operate. In the simulation, the robot will be remotely operated, and not be autonomous. The Ryonic team is expecting very strong competition, especially from Japan and South Korea.

The challenge has two stages – a preliminary round, now under way and ending on January 14. The 20 or so top teams in this round will go forward into the final round, which will take place in June next year, although practice rounds will be allowed from February. The top four or so teams will then be allowed to work with the real robot.