In celebration of International Moon Day, we were excited to support the second-annual Moon Village Association (MVA) international tele-robotics event last month. On July 20th, teams from schools and universities around the world linked up with a trio of rovers: our own Helelani rover in Hawaiʻi, Mission Control’s Husky Rover in Canada, and Neurospace’s HiveR rover in Germany.
Throughout the day, PISCES Research Director Christian Andersen connected with teams from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Guatemala from a mobile command center, facilitating their operation of Helelani through an obstacle course at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. Teams navigated and drove the rover from thousands of miles away using situational awareness cameras to keep their bearing and guide them around the course.
The event aimed to promote international collaboration and provide first-hand experience with the command-line interface used to remotely operate rovers like those on Mars.