Crowdsourcing Data For Spaceships from Remote Controlled Toy
The European Space Agency (ESA) is turning to the crowd to help improve how robotic vehicles rendezvous in space.
The agency has created the AstroDrone app for owners of a radio controlled flying copter called Parrot AR. Drone. The toy flies on four rotors and can be controlled with Android devices and iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads. It is popular with many iPhone users and around half a million units have been sold since it was launched in 2010.
The app gamifies the copter’s flight path, so as it is flying around users see a virtual drone in low-earth orbit. The aim of the game is to dock the toy with a simulated International Space Station (ISS) as quickly as possible without scrapes or crashes.
The game records such information as how pilots assessed their docking position and corrected it in relation to nearby objects.
Teaching Robots
ESA is hoping to be sent millions of hours’ worth of data. This will be used to help fine-tune robot navigation so the machines and spacecraft will be better able to maneuver and judge distances.
“For ESA, this development opens up completely new ways of involving the public in scientific experiments,” said Leopold Summerer, head of the ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team.
“We can obtain real-life data to train our algorithms in large amounts that would practically be impossible to get in any other way.”
Starting the docking procedure.
Successful docking.
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