the most important robotic competition ever...

[savuporo]

You all heard of the Google Lunar X-Prize announcement some time ago, right ?
If not, go check the website. Cool $20 million to the first team to land a robot on the moon and move at least 500 meters, sending back high-definition video.
Some high profile robot builders, like Red Whittaker of CMU have already announced their participation.

However...

For some reason, when anyone talks space robots, thy think wheeled, slow, ages old hardware. The curent mars rovers run an ancient 20MHZ RISC CPU, and they putter around a few meters a day.

I think its imperative, that the robot to win GLXP will be a two legged robpt, walking tall.
Even cooler, two robots able to film eachother.

Now the hardest part of this competition is to actually get this project funded, and getting from low earth orbit to lunar surface. Building the robot itself is relatively easy.
I think somebody needs to tell Hondas and Sonys, and maybe Kyoshos of this world, that this is a technology sponsorship opportunity of the century. I believe Honda would die for a chance to do the ultimate ASIMO commercial, with them walking around on the moon.

Bear in mind, that lots of space agencies around the world are now restarting or starting reinvigorated lunar exploration efforts. Japanese JAXA just put the Selene/Kayuga orbiter on the moon, there is a Chinese one scheduled for later this year, and NASA plans to launch LRO soon.

However, none of them has plans to actually land anything on the moon before the GLXP deadlines, and NASAs plans to put humans there keep getting pushed back, with the earlies possible date sometime in 2018.

Wouldnt it be nice if someone put humanoid footprints there, before actual humans get their boots in the dirt again ?

[Robo1]

The reason that all the exploration vehicles are so slow is because they have no IA. the move 1 meter then the ground team have to think a couple of hour what to do next, then send the command back to robot. Who would trust a 1 Dillion+ robot to think for it self. But I have to admit see a asimo advert where he's on the moon playing golf would be very cool. maybe a couple of them having a round of golf, now were talking.

Bren

[savuporo]

The reason that all the exploration vehicles are so slow is because they have no IA.

I a fully aware why martian robots are so slow. However, the case is different with moon. Mars has 20-minute signal roundtrip lag, where moon has 2 seconds.
Lunokhod was basically teleoperated robot, it had almost no autonomous functions.

Who would trust a 1 Dillion+ robot to think for it self.

That is the root of the problem with current, government-built space hardware, and that is exactly the problem that X-Prize and Google Lunar X-Prize are trying to solve. Its expensive.
Just because current space hardware costs often hundreds of millions, there is no inherent reason why they HAVE to be, and thus Google put up 20 million as the prize money.
If you can get it done cheaper and that, you make some nice bonus, if you "only" break even, you will be eternally famous for being the first private organization putting anything on another body in solar system.

[tempusmaster]

I think somebody needs to tell Hondas and Sonys, and maybe Kyoshos of this world, that this is a technology sponsorship opportunity of the century. I believe Honda would die for a chance to do the ultimate ASIMO commercial, with them walking around on the moon.

That would be absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately Asimo here on Earth requires quite a bit of support equipment and a full crew behind the scenes operating him - not to mention running out to pull the curtain quickly when he falls down.

I think the challenge will be won by a robot, hopefully a humanoid of some type, but they have enough of a challenge keeping Asimo working well here without sending him to the Moon.

[savuporo]

hey, it doesnt have to be ASIMO, could as well be KHR or Bioloid

Just that i know that ASIMO is heavily used as PR tool, well that would be the ultimate PR opportunity for Honda. IIRC, Honda has sunk north of $200 million into development of ASIMO.

I think someone needs to take this and try sell the idea of the project to competing japanese prominent technology companies Hopefully one of them will pick it up, and others cant be left behind. The more competition the merrier.

[JonHylands]

Its a nice dream, but it isn't going to happen.

The reason they use ancient 20 MHz cpus in planetary rovers is the same reason they use wheels, and the same reason they cost so much - reliability. Once the thing takes off from earth, you can't touch it. No adjustments, no parts replacements.

Think about what the two mars rovers have done - they have been running on Mars now for almost four years now. How many robots do you know of that can run for four years, travel kilometers in distance, and not require any physical fixes?

Even if someone can put together a mars rover for $20 million, do you honestly believe the person paying the bills is going to settle for anything less than rock-solid reliability? What we hobbiests build, what the Japanese firms build, are toys compared to what NASA builds.

- Jon

[savuporo]

I dont think you quite got the point of this competition.
Its not about building the ultimately reliable robot that goes to perform science for years.

Its about coming out with entirely new ideas, for way cheaper, way different approaches to what has been previously done in space.

The goals of the compo are relatively modest. Its not about mars, mars is much harder for robots because of the communications time lag.

They purposefully picked an attainable target, which would have significant symbolic value and would garner lots of public interest.

If a sponsor funds a project, say at $15 million, or just pays the launch costs, like $7 million , they dont NEED to have the robot doing anything useful on the surface, except to complete the simple primary goals of the Prize.
They will make a nice $5 million ( or $13 ) off the project, and get lots of free publicity and PR in the progress, and at the end, they will have technology base to work from for future commercial space development.

Even if they lose a few million doing this, the sheer PR value of pulling this off would pay itself.

Thats the very reason why people competed in the original X-Prize, why people are and were competing in DARPA Grand Challenges and other prizes.

[Gort]

I don't think that the robot is the problem. I think the problem is how to get it to the moon in one piece. Also how do you do that for less than 20 million?

[savuporo]

I think the problem is how to get it to the moon in one piece. Also how do you do that for less than 20 million?

Exactly ! Ten points.

However, its doable. SpaceX advertises their launch costs for Falcon I in 7 Million range, and there is a special discount for GLXP competitors.

There are a couple of ex-soviet boosters ( Dnepr , Rockot, Strela and so on ) that are also less than or near to $10Mil.

Which leaves you arguably enough budget to manage LEO to lunar soft landing flight, and build the robot as well.

As to how to accomplish the LEO-to-moon part, there are dozens of ways, one of them is contacting one of the teams that is competing in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge this year, like Armadillo Aerospace or Masten Space.
Armadillo has spent "only" $3 Mil _throghout the entire history_ of their rocket developments.

Unfortunately this also means, that unless someone ponies up their own money, useful sponsorship starts in the ~10 Mil range, to at least pay for the ground to LEO launch part.

[JonHylands]

Most of these big-dollar competition teams are only funded because the people doing the funding expect to get more out of it than just the prize.

All the serious big DARPA Grand Challenge teams spent far more on their entries than the prize was worth. The real win was (and will be) the follow-on contracts with DARPA for actually fulfilling the mandate of autonomous vehicles by 2015.

For the X-prize winners, I suspect Paul Allen invested more than $10 million, because they are going to turn that technology into a space tourism business.

If you're going to pump $15 million into the Google lunar competition, I would think you would want some kind of contingency plans in case someone else gets there first, or your launch vehicle blows up, or whatever.

I suppose a really big company like Honda might be willing to sink that kind of money for the publicity value alone, but that's a fairly big chunk of change for what might end up being little or no return.

- Jon

[savuporo]

Most of these big-dollar competition teams are only funded because the people doing the funding expect to get more out of it than just the prize.

Of course. Thats the case here as well

For the X-prize winners, I suspect Paul Allen invested more than $10 million, because they are going to turn that technology into a space tourism business.

Entirely true. Mr Allen spent north of $20Mil on SS1. In fact, most of the bigger tech development prizes in history, including the famous Orteig Prize have drawn more total development dollars than the actual prize value, and often individual entrants spend more on their attempts. This does not preclude the possibility of an underdog winning the competition with low budget entry. There were a few in original X-Prize that would have stood a fair chance, had the deadline been a year longer.

If you're going to pump $15 million into the Google lunar competition, I would think you would want some kind of contingency plans in case someone else gets there first, or your launch vehicle blows up, or whatever.

Never invest more than you can afford to lose

I suppose a really big company like Honda might be willing to sink that kind of money for the publicity value alone, but that's a fairly big chunk of change for what might end up being little or no return.

Its a high risk, high payoff venture. If Honda would get a pair of ASIMOs on the moon, the $20M prize money would pale in comparison to PR value. Imagine that, the company that Powers your Dreams beat everybody, including Chinese and NASA back to the moon.

Besides, these big companies routinely spend more than we are discussing here on just advertising campaigns.

[Gort]

This rover looks like it would be a good starting point for a moon rover or at lest gave you ideas on how to start.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~personalrover/PER/