Human-Robot Collaboration in a Planetary Settlement Setup: Collaborative Work, Interactions Design and Human Factors

Since the NASA space exploration roadmap has been oriented toward the “back to the Moon” paradigm in 2004, most space agencies (and ESA in particular) consider the Moon as the very likely next destination for human exploration of the solar system (Mars being obviously in line of sight). Planetary exploration endeavors in the solar system rely more and more on robotic tools and platforms, as precursors to manned planetary exploration (e.g. the latest NASA Phoenix robotized lander), and then as dependable support to human planetary activities (exploration missions, habitat/shelters assembly, science payloads deployment and maintenance, etc.). This paper deals more especially with the latter, i.e. how humans and advanced robotic platforms can beneficially collaborate in a typical planetary settlement scenario. According to NASA [1] human-robotic systems for space exploration missions can be decisive in future. As Fong and Nourbakhsh [2] point out it will be important for space missions to reduce the human workload, costs, fatigue driven error and risk and that robotic systems will thus be part of these missions. It will be crucial for future space exploration that human-robot collaboration becomes natural and efficient.