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My name is Brian Roberts.

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I'm the Head Robotic Technologist here at the Goddard Space Flight Center. 

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Today, we're going to take a tour of the ROC

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or the Robotic Operations Center.

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As you enter the ROC, you see a room that's a little bit smaller than a


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gymnasium at a school. 


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You'll notice that the walls are


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all black and that's to simulate the darkness of space so we


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can shut the lights out in the room and the robots will be


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in an environment that will be as dark as it is in space.


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So just like sports teams practice before they play a game, we practice with


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robots as well.


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The first robot you'll hear is our engineering unit of the eventual robot that


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will fly in space.


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The reason we build that is so we can work out all the details of how to put the


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robot together,


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make sure it works before we build the more expensive


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flight unit.


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So the sound you hear sounds like hail hitting a tin roof.


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What you'll hear is the brakes on the robot coming on and off.


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moving back and forth and you kind of hear a tinging sound as the seven pieces


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of metal are hitting each other.


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This robot is a hexapod which is a motion platform


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on which we mount a satellite mock-up


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and the robot then moves that mock-up,


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simulating its motion as it would be moving through space.


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What you'll hear are


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the motors moving back and forth and it kind of sounds like a car engine revving


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up and revving down


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as you push the gas pedal


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and get more acceleration, less acceleration. 


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You'll hear those motors


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moving the six legs of the robot up and down back and forth in front of the


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robot.


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The last robot you'll hear is an industrial robot that's used by car companies


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and

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other factories to assemble furniture, assemble cars or paint cars.


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So this robot is about the size of a human, maybe six feet or so, 


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and it's got seven degrees of freedom, so seven individual


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actuators that move.


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What you'll hear is it moving through our facility and much like the previous


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robot, 


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you'll hear the motors kind of revving up and


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revving down.

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Thank you for spending some time today touring our Robotic Operations Facility

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and listening to some of the robots that we

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use to simulate robots working in space.