Astronaut training: Haptics/Interact - Interact Protocol 2

These so-called On-Board Training videos are the original videos that ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, prepared for the Haptics/Interact experiments where an astronaut in space controls a joystick on Earth – with force-feedback.

Danish ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen will take control of the Interact Centaur rover, which incorporates a pair of arms to perform precision operations.

In the process Andreas will make use of haptic control – providing him with force feedback to let him feel for himself as the robotic arms encounter resistance. In this way, he can perform dexterous mechanical assembly tasks in the sub-millimetre range, remote-controlled from space.

This video is used to refresh Andreas’s memory on how to run the experiment in space. Due to the many experiments and skills astronauts are required to learn and train for and their busy schedules months can pass between their training on an experiment and performing the experiment in space. On-Board Training videos are made as a quick way of reminding astronauts what they will be doing.