Quantifying Operational Constraints of Low-Latency Telerobotics for Planetary Surface Operations

NASA's SLS and Orion crew vehicle will launch humans to cislunar space to begin the new era of space exploration. NASA plans to use the Orion crew vehicle to transport humans between Earth and cislunar space where there will be a stationed habitat known as the Deep Space Gateway (DSG). The proximity to the lunar surface allows for direct communication between the DSG and surface assets, which enables low-latency telerobotic exploration. The operational constraints for telerobotics must be fully explored on Earth before being utilized on space exploration missions. We identified two constraints on space exploration using low-latency surface telerobotics and attempts to quantify these constraints. A constraint associated with low-latency surface telerobotics is the bandwidth available between the orbiting command station and the ground assets. The bandwidth available will vary during operation. As a result, it is critical to quantify the operational video conditions required for effective exploration. We designed an experiment to quantify the threshold frame rate required for effective exploration. The experiment simulated geological exploration via low-latency surface telerobotics using a COTS rover in a lunar analog environment. The results from this experiment indicate that humans should operate above a threshold frame rate of 5 frames per second. In a separate, but similar experiment, we introduced a 2.6 second delay in the video system. This delay recreated the latency conditions present when operating rovers on the lunar farside from an Earth-based command station. This time delay was compared to low-latency conditions for teleoperation at the DSG ($\leq$0.4 seconds). The results from this experiment show a 150% increase in exploration time when the latency is increased to 2.6 seconds. This indicates that such a delay significantly complicates real-time exploration strategies.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1706.0375

Law-in-Translation: An Assemblage in Motion

Law-in-translation, as it manifests itself in either oral or written form, can be usefully described as an assemblage in motion. Oscillating between the generic and the singular, legal translation has gradually affirmed a disciplinary identity of sorts vis-à-vis other well-established genres, such as literary translation or the translation of Scripture. Further, legal translation has been moving from the local to the ‘glocal’ scene. This neologism wishes to capture the idea that while law is more and more subject to translation on the European or international level, it remains unable to escape local forms of understanding. Finally, legal translation has been amplifying its semantic range from the literal to the metaphorical. Long confined to the transmission of oral or written statements across languages, law-in-translation features new instantiations as can be illustrated, for instance, through the ever-expanding circulation of legal concepts from one country to another and the re-formulation of law into economic language within international business relations