NASA’s Robot Avatars

How NASA uses video game tech in space exploration

No matter how completely technics relies upon the objective procedures of the sciences, it does not form an independent system, like the universe: it exists as an element in human culture and it promises well or ill as the social groups that exploit it promise well or ill.

— Lewis Mumford

I recently spoke on the phone with NASA’s Jeff Norris about the agency’s ongoing work on human-robotic interfaces for space exploration. Norris heads up the Planning Software Systems Group (Planning and Execution Systems) at NASA JPL. His group’s doing advanced research on integrating video game and consumer tech into the technical framework of human-guided, robotic space exploration.

Norris confirmed that a Sony Magic Lab interactive space exploration module on the PS4 would play a “major part of the strategy that we’re pursuing in this area.” He added that a lot of the technologies being developed in the video game industry are highly applicable to the work being done at NASA.

Norris leads a set of projects in a project group that is known as HRS (Human-Robotic Systems). This is the group designing the future of human-robotic communication. It’s called R.A.P.I.D., a communication protocol that NASA has developed that establishes a…