L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, AUGUST 24 2023 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS C ADRE is a pro- ject that started in 2020 and is cur- rently developing a trio of miniature rovers - each about the size of a carry-on suitcase - that will explore the Moon by taking simultaneous measurements from multiple points. Their peculiarity? These robots are programmed to work as an autonomous team to explore the lunar surface, collect data, and map different areas of our satellite in 3D. Not only that, they will also be able to cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. Joining the team working o n t h i s m i s s i o n , w h i c h i s scheduled to arrive on the Moon in the spring of 2024 as part of NASA's Commercial L u n a r P a y l o a d S e r v i c e s (CLPS) initiative, is Italian engineer Federico Rossi, who has been a robotics tech- nologist at the Maritime and M u l t i - A g e n t A u t o n o m y Group of the Robotics Section o f N A S A ' s J e t P r o p u l s i o n Laboratory in Pasadena since 2018. Born in 1988 in Cardano al Campo, Varese, Italy, Federi- co earned a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Politecnico in Milan, a master's degree in Aero- space Engineering from the Politecnico in Turin and a P h . D . i n A e r o n a u t i c s a n d Astronautics from Stanford University before joining the US government space agency. L'Italo-Americano had the pleasure to chat with Fed- erico and ask him about the project, AI technology, NASA, and how his love for robotics began... CADRE is a technology d e m o n s t r a t i o n . W h a t does it mean? Basically, we are going to send three small robots to the moon, among the smallest lunar robots NASA has ever built (they weigh 10kg) and their special feature is that they are highly autonomous. N o r m a l l y , w h e n w e s e n d Rovers to Mars, there is a team of humans following everything, we are the ones telling the Rover to go to a certain spot. Instead with CADRE, we want to do some- thing different, we want to tell these three robots: "Here is an area, explore it and send us a map." And we want the robots to do it by themselves. If this technology works it could be used in future sci- ence missions and for larger Rovers. Before we try it on a full-size Rover, we better try it on a smaller mission. W h a t o r d e r s d o y o u want to give these three Rovers? We are going to do two experiments in particular: the first is about exploration: we want the Rovers to cap- ture images of an area with our cameras to reconstruct it in 3D. The second involves using a multi-static radar where all the robots transmit and receive images. This will allow us to reconstruct the 3D map of the subsurface. Besides the autonomy, what other differences can we find with other active Rover missions? First of all, we command one Rover at a time. Right now on Mars, we have two Rovers, Curiosity and Perse- verance, that don't communi- cate with each other and are about 2,300 miles apart. So h a v i n g m u l t i p l e v e h i c l e s working with each other is a new aspect. What are the advan- t a g e s o f h a v i n g s u c h autonomy? There are two classes of advantages. The first is that a u t o n o m y a l l o w s y o u t o achieve scientific aims you may not necessarily be able to achieve with humans. This is because of distance: For example, Saturn and Uranus can be reached in tens of hours, and the further you go the more energy you need. If we want to observe a tran- sient phenomenon, one that lasts less than twenty hours, there is no way for a human to observe it. Moreover, the further we go, the larger the antennas we need to commu- nicate should be. Even the current 70-meter antennas do what they can. So we can achieve more by trying to get around and break through the speed of light and the lit- tle bandwidth available. The second aspect is that, with autonomy, we need fewer people in mission control, which means we can deploy those people on more mis- sions, and use federal money to do other things. W h a t d o y o u t h i n k about AI, and is it a tech- nology you use? AI is a set of technologies that we also use here. For e x a m p l e , p l a n n i n g a n d s c h e d u l i n g , w h i c h i n t h e industry is considered classic AI, is a technology developed in the 1980s; there is also a machine learning and rein- forcement learning technolo- gy. On CADRE we are not using the latter type, but we are using it aboard Curiosity and Perseverance. It's called AEGIS, a software that can recognize interesting rocks. Thanks to it scientists can tell the Rover to take samples and pictures. W h a t h a s s u r p r i s e d y o u m o s t a b o u t t h e s e years at NASA? JPL is a unique place in the world. If you want to go to Mars, the majority of peo- ple who landed on Mars are a l l h e r e . T h e t h i n g t h a t amazed me the most is how open the culture at JPL is; when I arrived I was greeted by people very high up, who made themselves available f o r m e . S o I w a s a m a z e d more than anything else by this willingness to tell people about what you do here, to share it. What is your greatest satisfaction so far? This is more than a job. Technical work is nice how- ever sometimes it is also tir- ing. In those cases, I remind myself that we are helping scientists answer fundamen- tal questions and that moti- vates me a lot. You work a lot but then when you manage to send three fully autonomous Rovers to the moon, which has never been done before, it's a great feeling. Your wife, Valentina Ricchiuti, also works at JPL. What does she do? She is also an engineer and she does contamination con- trol, so she makes sure that, when we send a spacecraft or a Rover around the Solar Sys- tem, there are no contami- nants. For example, if we want to send a spectrometer to study the properties of the surface of a moon in the solar system, we want to make sure that the sensor is extremely clean otherwise we're mea- suring the properties of the c o n t a m i n a t i o n w e g o t i n Pasadena or Florida. After CADRE, what will you be in charge of? I don't know yet. We have some great projects going on, among other things we're w o r k i n g o n t h e s a m p l e return, which if approved will help take samples on Mars and bring them back to Earth. Then there's an internal pro- j e c t c a l l e d E E L S , a s n a k e robot designed to go explor- ing the crevasses on Ence- l a d u s , a m o o n o f S a t u r n . Then there is Endurance, a Rover that, if approved, will travel thousands of kilome- t e r s o n t h e s u r f a c e o f t h e Moon collecting samples and then bringing them back to the astronauts who will land o n t h e s o u t h p o l e o f t h e Moon. When did your passion for robotics start? I've always had a passion for space, I've always kept my n o s e u p , t o l o o k a t s t a r s , planes or launches. My love for robotics was born during my undergraduate studies. I did a semester at the Univer- sity of Toulouse in France and I fell in love with it there. F i n d i n g a p l a c e l i k e J P L where you can do robotics for space was great. What made you fall in love? The beauty of robotics is that you live in this rarefied world that is in your head, made of 0s and 1s, made of coding. Then you put those t h i n g s o n a r o b o t a n d i t moves in a real space. It's like holding a foot in two spaces, a mathematical, theoretical space and a real space. Federico Rossi and his wife, Valentina Ricciuti. Dr Ricciuti works at JPL, too (Photo courtesy of Federico Rossi and Valentina Ricciuti) Federico Rossi and the mission for NASA: three mini Rovers on the Moon SILVIA NITTOLI

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