Technology transfer from space to earth

Detail Artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing or autonomous driving - most of us have heard of these technologies and we know that they will change our lives sooner or later. But quite often we ask ourselves: What exactly is behind these technologies and where are they already being applied? How can they help us as a society and how can each and every one of us benefit from them? Dr. Armin Wedler from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), more precisely the Institute of Robotics, and Nicolai Harnisch from Bayern Innovativ, give their views on these exciting topics.

Nicolai, how do we bring technologies like autonomous driving to the road? Or put another way, how do we use it to create added value for society?

Nicolai Harnisch: At Bayern Innovativ , I'm in charge of Mobility . There, as part of the ZD.B theme platform Networked Mobility , we organized a network conference last year on the topic of Resilience in the Networked Mobility System . In doing so, we asked ourselves how social systems, in this case the mobility system, can be made more robust and resilient to crises. This is an essential question given the multiple crises we currently face and are likely to face in the future, be it pandemics, supply chain disruption, wars, or even climate change.
One theme of the conference was what role (especially digital) innovations can play to increase the resilience of this system. In the course of this, we came across a project that we learned about through a call for proposals, which we proposed for funding as part of the Bavarian collaborative research project. It is a sub-project of the A.H.E.A.D. (Autonomous Humanitarian Emergency Aid Devices) project from the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This project is a great example of how technologies - which in this case are being tested on Mars - are being brought to Earth to deal with acute, very specific problems here on our planet.

Armin, what exactly is behind DLR?

Dr. Armin Wedler: Basically, the German Aerospace Center, as the name suggests, is primarily concerned with aerospace technologies. So we have many basic institutes that develop technologies. But we are also an agency that is responsible for funding the space industry in Germany, so to speak, and we have a project management organization that does space tenders. I work in robotics, so the Institute for robotics and mechatronics in Oberpfaffenhofen-Weßling, and we are engaged in the development of robotic enabling technologies primarily for these space applications, i.e. for aerospace. Energy and transportation are also topics at DLR, but basically we have the focus just mentioned. Nevertheless, we are also always looking for derivatives for terrestrial applications that have a topical relevance.
Here we started a cooperation with various humanitarian users four to five years ago. This involves other topics besides robotics, such as the use of AI technologies or data analysis from Earth observation satellites and aircraft. Among other things, conclusions can be drawn from these to generate food security chains. So basically, we are trying to bring all the technologies that are available to DLR into terrestrial current application fields.
In the framework, we have set up the A.H.E.A.D. project. Our goal is to ensure the last mile of delivery, e.g. for food deliveries, in cooperation with the World Food Programme. In the process, we are trying to transfer the remotely operated vehicles to prototype status so that it will be possible to carry out remote-controlled food deliveries over the last few kilometers.

In general, do you first develop this technology in a large application context, then look for use cases and carry out the transfer in this direction?

Dr. Armin Wedler: Yes, basically you can put it that way. So my robotics team, which I coordinate here, is primarily concerned with the drive technology from the rover on planetary surfaces. The focus is on the control system, the so-called locomotion subsystem, which implies the design of a landing gear, or the control options. The remotely operated system has to perceive its environment, which is done by perceptive methods. Thereby, it must be possible to execute the remote control and technologies even if problems and disturbances occur, such as high data and communication failures, delays or low bandwidths. We are dealing here with the so-called SLAM problem, or Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, where we map the environment and register ourselves in it at the same time. In doing so, we estimate our self-motion as well as position and are then able to act autonomously, semi-autonomously and remotely as well.
This is exactly what we have for space. There is the requirement of how to operate a Mars rover with different constraints. So far, we may not have it in what we call a technology readiness level, which is a flight version for a terrestrial application. But we have a great deal of experience in this field, and it is an area of research in which we are working very intensively and in which we are also very well positioned in Germany in an international comparison. We are applying this experience to terrestrial humanitarian aid. And this has parallels with autonomous driving, although here we are clearly dealing with an unstructured environment. That's also where the big difference is, because we don't have lines that we can recognize and we don't even have a road anymore in some cases.
So the vehicle that we're automating is an amphibious vehicle: it can swim and drive. In addition, it has to be fit for the very harsh environment. In part, we also don't have GPS, which is a great basis for localization in autonomous driving. We only have our perception sensors in the form of a camera- and laser-based perception array, which is what we mount directly on the vehicle. We are also looking at how the communication link can be kept secure, even if failures occur, so that we can still operate the vehicle safely and robustly.

Are there any findings from these projects that can also be used for autonomous driving - i.e. for everyday life in the future?

Dr. Armin Wedler: That can be clearly deduced. We operate in joint projects with other SMEs and spin-off from our institute. Roboception GmbH, which works on stereo image data processing, primarily deals with the industrial environment, so is responsible for grasping or recognizing objects in the automation environment, in the normal robotics deployment environment, but also already with mobile systems. Agricultural robotics, for example, has already been promoted in various other projects and there are such application fields in warehouse logistics.
The company Blickfeld, for example, has developed an innovative solid-state laser. With a very small and compact design of the laser technology, it offers active sensor technology to get depth image information even over a greater distance.
The company Sensodrive GmbH makes drive technology for industrial robots, such as for KUKA. The company is very active, especially in torque devices - power devices - and sensitive drives. And it automates for us here, for example, the haptic input devices, as well as the various interfaces that we have to the vehicle.
With the support of Bayern innovativ and the World Food Programme, DLR is pursuing the goal of promoting technology and putting it to use for humanitarian aid and then possibly implementing it again in non-humanitarian areas. We work together with the spin-offs in this project on the humanitarian challenge at A.H.E.A.D to make such a vehicle remotely controllable. But they are also working with other project partners for vehicles, automation, industry, automation or on other derivatives.

The interview was conducted by Dr. Tanja Jovanovic, Head of Technology and Innovation Management at Bayern Innovativ GmbH.