The Telerobotics Program consists of a range of tasks from basic scientific research to the application of these technologies to solve specific problems in NASA operations. As with all basic research, the research tasks of the Telerobotics Program are high-risk in nature, and there is no guarantee that the associated deliverables will come to full fruition. However, the tasks within the Telerobotics Program are selected so that with those high-risk tasks there is an associated high-payoff to an application area if the project is successful. Given this risk, the tasks are planned so that adequate intermediate progress in the form of phased deliverables (milestones) can be achieved. Hence, even if the project cannot be achieved in full, there is always some tangible payoff to the user and research communities. As a counterpoint, the applications (systems) tasks tend to have a lower risk factor in that the application environment tends to be reasonably mature and the task itself is well understood. However, it must be recognized that they are far from risk-free because of the relative youth of the entire discipline of telerobotics.
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