Project Tango : NASA SPHERES
>>James Fung with Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects group
this is a really interesting opportunity for us to take the work of project tango
and put it into a
really unique environment that's difficult to recreate here on earth
>>My name is Joel Hesch I work on project tango doing sensor fusion
what's really exciting about the collaboration with
the NASA Ames team
is to see how our prototype device can be paired with
the science and sensing capabilities of spheres
the primary purpose of spheres is really to
do chores that astronauts have to do currently
but using robots to do those instead
by adding on this cell phone has ability to visually navigating
where it is determined by its camera alone we open up the platform to
navigate the whole station think about how many free flying robots that can fly around
inside a space station perhaps equipped with some future smartphone
were gonna do a Zero G flight in Texas
what this Zero G flight is gonna let us do is test all the systems as they would
operate in space in Zero G
simulation doesn't work we've got to fly it
to see this work in Zero G would be pretty awesome
nasa had this whole disclaimer
it was a little intimidating but I think we'll be ok
this aromatic maneuver can induce physiological responses
not generally experienced outside this environment
hypoxia is a potential response what is hypoxia
air hunger not sure what that is apprehension nausea headache belligerence
we have teams going up in groups of 3 and a test tracker
someone operating a laptop receiver and someone who is just operating a sphere
one other responsibility is to make sure we run tests in the correct sequence
and helping the other guys keep on track nowhere else can you deal with
aerobatic maneuvers over and over again on a commercial airplane on a standard
flight takeoff nose up maybe six to 10 degrees
reach a cruise altitude then you descend and land on this flight we take off
climb up to 19,000 feet pull 1.8g up to 35,000
then descend at 26,000 feet a minute
back down to 19,000 feet it's pretty exciting
it's a wild ride to get to the Zero G sweet spot
we have the sweet spot indicators BR accelerometers and also the duck
once the duck is right here we've hit the sweet spot
the first couple of hours trying to hold the sphere
trying to hold on grab on since we have spheres
the development that we're doing is just getting started
and this is the first device that we are building
if you can do sensor fusion and perception on a mobile phone you can enable so many use
cases
that can be used on other devices like spheres that benefit the lives of people that can
really impact
in a way that wasn't possible for both in terms of the opportunity to work on this project
and for this particular collaboration I think they are extremely great opportunities