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IPFS News Link • Robots and Artificial Intelligence

Moon Robot Will Broadcast In Virtual-Reality Video

• http://www.popsci.com

A team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon have built a robot that will send video from the moon to the Earth. And the robot will be controlled by the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, with the 3-D camera on the robot turning to match the head movements of the user.

"The vision was simple -- let anyone on Earth experience the Moon live through the eyes of a robot," team leader Daniel Shafrir told BBC News. "We weren't just going to go to the Moon. We are going to bring the Moon back."

This telepresence robot is named Andy, after Andrew Carnegie, the famed industrialist who founded the college. Currently, only the operator controlling this moon rover will be able to see through its "eyes" thousands of miles away.

The project is being worked on in partnership with Astrobotic, a company that was spun off from Carnegie Mellon. The company builds a variety of space robots for various purposes such as transportation, exploration, and mining. Astrobotic has a deal with SpaceX, the private space exploration company, to include Andy on a mission to the moon scheduled for 2016.


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