• Question: How hard is it to program all the robots to do what you want?

    Asked by cbaxter12 to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 13 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Oooh, that’s tricky to answer. The actual process of programming them is usually pretty easy. But there’s a complication! In order to stop things going wrong, we need to make sure – like really really sure – that the code we program is correct and has no bugs in it. Even a small bug could cause serious problems – for example, the very first Ariane 5 rocket launch had a tiny mistake which ended up causing the rocket to explode! The programming therefore can be quite hard and take a lot of time to do to make sure it’s all perfect.

    • Photo: Jessica Marshall

      Jessica Marshall answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      The programming can be really exciting as you can think about all the different options and ways to do something. We are testing out the programming for our Mars Rover by having a full size rover drive over sand and rocks to test it all. This is taking several years to develop, so some fairly hard stuff!

    • Photo: Aron Kisdi

      Aron Kisdi answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Robots will always do what you program them to do put sometimes that is not what you want them to do.
      There can be a “bug” (error, typo) in the code so we need to test the robots, in the lab and outside (e.g.: Atacama desert) before we can send them to space.
      Some parts of the program is very easy like driving motors, taking images and so one but some parts are very tricky like enabling the robot navigate safely and explore on its own. The most difficult is to enable the robot to learn and react to unforeseen situations.

    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      It can be tricky, but we have lots of tests and reviews before running the programme on e.g. a robotic spacecraft.

      For example, the most complicated robot I’ve ever controlled was the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the planet Saturn. I was responsible for writing programmes to control how spacecraft viewed a moon, or the rings or the planet itself. I did this using a special piece of software (written by colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL) that took the programming commands and then simulated it moving the spacecraft. If there were any problems, the simulation would show them before we got anywhere near ‘uplinking’ (i.e. transmitting) the sequence of commands to Cassini. The team at JPL would also check them several other times before the commands were sent to the spacecraft.

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