NASA Testing Linux-Based Exploration Robots 137
SeenOnSlash.com writes "This week NASA is testing a Linux-based lunar rover called K-10 in the Arizona desert. To cut costs and promote maintainability the K-10 runs Linux and uses commercial off-the-shelf parts where possible. The robot rover's control and communications system is based on an IBM Thinkpad X31 and attaches to subsystems with standard PC interfaces. Real-time tasks such as fine-grained motor control are offloaded to a distributed network of microcontroller-powered control boards. Maneuvers can be watched through a live webcam."
Linux in space (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux in space (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Linux in space (Score:4, Funny)
And you know, if they land here, we'll arrest them for it.
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More importantly... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More importantly... (Score:5, Funny)
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Boldly (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Bodily (Score:2)
And just like ST:TOS, another split infinitive:
To go boldly where no penguin has gone before.
But I have a good question:
Q: Why isn't it running Windows?
A: It would only be available [at most] six days a week.
(Remember Patch Tuesday? I can only imagine the number of fixes required for the Interplanetary Edition of Windows XP.)
A great Contest (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A great Contest (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that the idea here is to cut down development costs, not the build costs for the final implementation. Commercial grade gear just wouldn't cut in space with the extrem temperature swings, cosmic radiation messing with memory or if you end up on Venus god knows what kind of weird atmosphere.
But someone could actually build a proof of concept design (like they're doing now) that could become the basis for the actual rover. I can't imagine it takes that much more work using Linux than some other solution since there's bound to be a lot of non-standard stuff going on with the rover software.
My Theory (Score:4, Funny)
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Q: How do we fix that?
A: Allow a private sectory heavy lift industry to devel
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Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
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Thank you very much. I had just got over my fear of skynet. You just had to remind me didn't you?
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Obligatory... (Score:4, Funny)
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How do you explain it? (Score:2)
and the link was NOT SLASHDOTTED!!!
some things are too strange to be believed....I don't know if life even makes sense now...
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Redhat (Score:1)
Leave it to the government to spend extra money where they dont need too.
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You can get RHEL recompiled for free with things like CentOS and others. You can recompile it yourself with Red Hat's SRPMs. What costs money is support. I doubt any government outfit would use a purely community distro that doesn't have a corporation and paid support staff behind it. That limits them to Red Hat, Suse/Novell, and Ubuntu/Cannonical mostly, and only one of those is a US-based endeavor.
In addition, TFA has this:
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OTS (Score:5, Funny)
Can I... (Score:2)
less worry about radiation on a planet? (Score:1)
Re:less worry about radiation on a planet? (Score:4, Informative)
One, this is a development model. Hardware subject to upgrade when making a "real" unit after the software achieves a basic level of maturity.
Two, you don't need a rad-hardened processor if you can wrap the whole computing unit in a rad-hardened box. Same goes for putting ice cubes in your freezer; if the fridge's materials and power units can withstand a thermal bombardment from the outside, the ice cube inside will remain solid.
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There's an important difference between an ice cube and a microprocessor. You see, if a single energetic photon happens to enter the box, and melts a little bit ice, it refreezes almost immediately and you'll never k
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(Hint: Lunar = hard vacuum = no air for the fans to move. Of course, for a *Mars* mission, it would work slightly better - but not much, because Martian air is quite thin.)
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(Hint: It was a joke. Obviously the K-10 roaming around in the fucking heat of the desert needs case fans, but the actual lunar module will have to have it's temerature regulated in another way. IANARS, but I am ful
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I don't get it (Score:3, Funny)
More Geek Street Cred (Score:1)
Which distro? (Score:1)
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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."
That'll teach me to read the damn article first next time.
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Victory! (Score:2, Insightful)
The robots are driven by custom robot-specific software that has nothing to do with the OS underneath. The main reason Linux gets used in such an application (or in supercomputers, clusters, etc) is simply that the OS doesn't matter enough for anyone to bother, so they'll grab the nearest thing on the shelf.
It's not like there's some feature of the OS that makes it especially robot-friendly.
Of course there is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Of course there is (Score:5, Funny)
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Less code requires less storage space.
Since I doubt these use HDDs every die of Flash you don't have to use is a few grams removed from the payload weight. (sorry to spoil your joke).
Also, It's not so much that linux is robot friendly, it's that in this case windows would be so un-friendly as to make the choice more obvious *(yes I realise that they likely were contemplating someting like linux Vs VxWorks, not linux Vs Windows).
-nB
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If not: F with the kernel and you can run it on a smaller processor. Or you can have it drive more efficient microcontrollers, sit on a whole new motherboard, etc.
As a matter of fact, for robots above a certain level of complexity I don't see how a closed-source kernel could possibly work.
Moo (Score:5, Funny)
In a statement released today, NASA has responded by offering to send Stallman to Mars.
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Aliens from Mars have sent a response, please wait we are decoding it now....
You can keep him!
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Of course, Stallman will ignore that message, because Martian is not an open source language.
K10... (Score:2)
Off the shelf? What about requirements? (Score:2)
Is NASA testing these off-the-shelf components for use in a vaccuum? Under intense radiation? Under extreme heat differentials? In the presence of moon dust?
Are they checking to make sure each component actually meets all the specifications, or are they relying on the industry's statistics that most of the boards meet most of the specs most of the time?
If something breaks, who is paying for the support call? How will parts be replaced on site?
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My guess is they're still working on getting the acpi driver to work on the Thinkpad. After that, they'll work on turning off the backlight. The vacuum/intense radiation stuff is next.
Yeah, But (Score:2)
IBM warranty void in space? (Score:1)
Linux could make fine probes (Score:2)
I always thought that much of the real cost of a "space" probe (besides getting actually it there) was the space hardened chips and
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It's cold in space... (Score:2)
Wifi? (Score:1)
*NIX? (Score:1)
*fear*
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Power consumption? (Score:1)
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I worked on that project this summer =) (Score:2, Informative)
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Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! (Score:1)
Higher Quality vs days of Yore (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone know what they were using before? (Score:1)
a) that they're using an "off the shelf OS" (as well as off the shelf hardware)
and then
b) that the OS in question is Linux.
I scanned TFA but saw no mention of what OS (if any) they used before.
Still cool though!
Also check out ATHLETE (Score:4, Informative)
I love my job.
ATHLETE is one of the coolest damn things I've seen in a long time, designed and built by a team of absolutely brilliant engineers. Think of a two-meter-tall six-legged metal spider on roller skates. Or, heck, just check the link above.
The current ATHLETE is a prototype (of course); the ones we send to the moon -- if we're selected -- will be twice that size. Yes, Slashdotters, welcome our four-meter-tall six-legged roller-skate-wearing metal spider overlords!
For additional coverage of K-10, ATHLETE, Centaur/Robonaut, and other vehicles participating in this test, check out the updates from JSC [nasa.gov].
Spider-Mind (Score:2)
Cooling Fans (Score:2)
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The things are solar powered last a long time and have precise software controls any chance of designing them to build some simple but reusable tools?
Side issue: Thinkpads from Lenovo? (Score:2)
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Linux in Space (Score:1)
I think it is pretty much a universally accepted fact making something "In Space" [imdb.com] is pretty much an undeniable jump the shark moment.
Most robots are linux based (Score:2)
A robot is a set of custom communicating processes and threads, with sensor and motor drivers.
What other OS has the level of control needed to get this done, while having a large user base?
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No, a robot is "your plastic pal who's fun to be with" (Sirius Cybernetics Corporation)
NOOOOO (Score:1)
Vi vs Emacs? (Score:2)
Cooling on the Moon (Score:2)
Cool hardware (Score:2)
Other than that this machine is perfectly capable of running complex stuff. And at slowest speed (600MHz), it consumes about 9W with the display on darkest and wireless off. Well suited for the job, I would think.
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Priority Inversion (Score:2)
Is there now priority inheritance in the linux kernel, or will NASA have to add it? Will they remember to (this is NASA)? Will the example of a mission to mars going wrong and needing patching add any weight to the pro-priority-inheritance argument?
Will be interesting
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It's been available in custom kernels from companies like TimeSys Corporation for the past six or so years. There's also a lightweightuser space priority inheritance feature in kernels from 2.6.18, which supports some RTOS features.
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There does seem to be a trend in NASA though to try moving away from commercial/proprietary products across the board. I have seen them using Fedora and other shades of Linux on their testbeds for simulation, and I have heard talk of them looking into RTOS versions of Linux for the future.
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I know in the water reclamation lab they had vxworks on several boards, but now in an air lab project they are using linux (eldk for the mips405 pc/104 board, and I used fedora core 5 for a dev server/nfs for the mips405).
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The cost savings probably coem from the fact that, with Linux, they have an operating system that they can fully customize to their specific needs (thus Windows would not be an option). Traditionally all of their mission software was 100% home-rolled. I suspect the reduced manpower to build the software is where the savings come in.
=Smidge=
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Check out the laptops on the station and shuttle. See that desktop? Windows. Every one of them I believe.
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The shuttle itself uses a bunch of 32bit AP-101 systems, which I doubt would be running Windows even if they were capable.
=Smidge=
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Basically yes - they are used for "non critical" applications (meaning nobody gets killed if the box goes belly up). They are used for a little more than just personal use - for example, the windows machines on ISS are used for the crew to reference flight procedures. Timelines are sent to them over the Windows machines. All the high resolution photos taken of the orbiter with
Re:"To Cut Costs"???? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is untrue - Spirit and Opportunity run VxWorks.
It would be interested to see any modifications NASA come out with for Linux (although since they aren't distributing the software they don't technically need to release the source). I understand they use a modified IP stack for communicating with recent probes, etc. so that's all stuff that could be published.
I suspect the reduced manpower to build the software is where the savings come in.
There could be stability bonuses too - even though noone else is using Linux for this job, the fact that large chunks of the code have been in use by a large number of people for years may be a big benefit - there's only so far that testing in the lab will go. (That is not to say they will reduce the testing they do, but starting with a code base that's well proved already is always a good thing on top of your normal test procedures)
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One issue might be the code size. Remember that the Mars Exploration Rovers had multiple software upgrades sent over during the mission. An embedded RT
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Ooohhh....I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
1) click "WAIT" to see if application responds before impact with planet's surface
2) click "FORCE QUIT" to stop application "Warning, you may lose some data"
3) Hit CNTRL-ALT-DEL frantically about 40 times followed by holding the power switch down until computer finally shuts down then restart. System should reboot after mandatory check of hard drive allowing you to try the application again.
4) start MS Word to quickly compos