So much happened since my last post. I marked my 1 year work-anniversary at NASA on May 28th, 2012. I produced three short films, two of which is related to NASA. One of those videos was shown to the astronaut in the International Space Station, as part of training for our mission: http://youtu.be/Gp_Jj3kzdiM
On June 17th 2012, we got to interface with the astronaut on board the ISS as part of our Surface Telerobotics Project. The day started at the crack of down (5am!). There were thankfully no major hiccups and we were able to successfully have the astronaut in space control the K10 rover on Earth! The astronaut who controlled our rover was Chris Cassidy. He's a Navy SEAL, an astronaut, and an engineer from MIT, which officially makes him one of the coolest astronauts ever :) When the session ended, he had only good things to say about the GUI and complimented us on intuitiveness of the controls and the smoothness of the operation. And this of course, made the day for all of us who worked on the project.
Here are high-res pictures sent from the ISS of the astronaut in ISS using our UI to control our rover on the ground:
Image Courtesy of Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center
Image Courtesy of Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center
Image Courtesy of Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center