Like the Ansari X Prize, which was claimed in 2004 by aircraft designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen for a pair of flights by SpaceShipOne, the Google Lunar X Prize is open to private industry and non-government entities worldwide, organizers said on Thursday.

First prize is $20 million for the group that can land a lunar rover – an unmanned robotic probe – on the Moon, take it on a 500-metre trek and broadcast video back to Earth by 31 December 2012.

The prize falls to $15 million if the landing takes place by 31 December 2014.

A second-place winner will receive $5 million. In addition, at least $5 million in bonuses are available for milestones such as finding relics from the US Apollo Moon landings, or from Soviet lunar explorations, detecting water ice or keeping the rover alive on the lunar surface overnight.

“What we’re trying to stimulate here is a widespread competition that will generate interest in people to get back into space,” said Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon and an advisor to the X Prize Foundation. The announcement was made at Wired magazine’s NextFest technology showcase, which opened on Thursday in Los Angeles, California, US.

‘Offshore island’

X Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis agrees. “Our hope is to educate and change public views about the Moon,” he said ahead of the announcement. “The Moon is an offshore island of Earth that has valuable resources which will benefit us as we grow as a species. We should look at it in that fashion.”

NASA had considered a similar venture as part of its Centennial Challenges programme, but the agency so far has been able to fund prizes only up to $750,000. The NASA competitions also are closed to non-Americans.

“NASA is kind of an interested bystander,” said Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and a longtime commercial space and lunar development advocate. “If a private company perfects a process to get payloads to the Moon, NASA will have a lot interest in that.”

The X-Prize Foundation decided on the goal of landing a robot instead of a human in order to make the prize attainable in the near future, hopefully in four to six years.

The US plans to retire its space shuttles in 2010 and develop new vehicles that can fly people to the International Space Station as well as the Moon. NASA, which landed six crews on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 under the Apollo programme, hopes to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2020. They may find it a busy place, as Russia, Japan, India and China have announced their own lunar ambitions.

Permanent settlement

Diamandis said he guessed four or five teams in the US have the technical skills and financial backing to enter the race, and about the same number overseas. He estimated building, flying and operating a rover on the Moon will cost between $20 million and $60 million.

It could seed a new industry. The SpaceShipOne flights paved the way for the construction of a fleet of commercial suborbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Passenger service is expected to begin in 2009 or 2010.

Similar to the multibillion dollar satellite industry sparked by the launch of Sputnik, Diamandis envisions this prize as opening the door to industries that utilise the Moon’s resources, including silicon for large-scale solar arrays, and water ice for oxygen and rocket fuel.

“We’re starting on steps that will eventually lead to permanent settlement of the Moon and Mars,” Worden said. “That’s probably going to get led by the private sector.”

To help aspiring lunar explorers, startup launch services firm Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of El Segundo, California, is offering to fly contestants’ rovers on its Falcon rockets at cost, which would be about $7 million for its smallest booster.

“I’m a huge believer in us becoming a space-faring civilisation,” said SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the creator of Internet payments scheme PayPal.

Is it possible to “feel” an object while being in another location? This is a question addressed by several technologies on show at the computer conference in San Diego, California, US, earlier this month.

, which exploits the sense of touch, could have a range of applications, researchers say, from telesurgery and robotic remote control to more immersive computer games.

Haptic devices currently range from simple “rumble pack” games controllers to force-feedback devices like the – a graspable pen on the end of a motorised robotic arm.

Box of balls

Gravity Grabber, developed by and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and demonstrated at SIGGRAPH, offers an easier way to stimulate touch, using a simple set up of motors and belts.

The prototype device consists of two tube-shaped attachments that fit over a person’s thumb and forefinger. Each tube has a pair of motors that sit on top and connect to a belt that wraps around the tip of the finger. The motors can pull on the belt to produce the feeling of touching an object, and can produce the feeling of holding something heavy by pulling more tightly.

Kouta Minamizawa, who worked on the project, says that something as simple and low-cost as the Gravity Grabber could be ideally suited to gaming. A demonstration at SIGGRAPH was used to make the wearer feel as if they were holding a box filled with balls. See a video of the .

Light touch

A more sensitive haptic device designed by Tachi’s team specifically for remote manipulation was also on show at the conference. Called Haptic Telexistence, it consists of a large mechanical controller that wraps around the outside of a user’s hand, which connects to a remote robotic “slave” hand.

Each fingertip on the slave hand is covered with LEDs with a small camera behind. The amount of the light reflected back from an object reveals its shape and how tightly it is held.

An equivalent amount of force is then transmitted to the user’s fingertips via an array of tiny pegs that pop up and deliver a miniscule electric current to stimulate nerve fibres.

Katsunari Sato, who is working on the project, says this “electro-tactile feedback” is more subtle than alternative techniques such as vibration. This can deliver a sensation a texture and even, in principle, heat.

Virtual tennis

Other researchers are also investigating ways to transmit touch with electrical stimulation. Farzam Farbiz at the in Singapore described a project that involves stimulating forearm muscles with electricity to produce the sensation of hitting a tennis ball.

By modulating the frequency and amplitude of signals delivered through electrodes on the arm, his device mimics the muscle contractions felt when an arm connects with a real ball. The sensations are not yet fully realistic, Farbiz admits, but he hopes they will improve as the process is better understood.

Feather weight

An unusual attempt to create a very delicate artificial sense of touch was the , created by Satoshi Saga and colleagues at Tohoku University in Japan.

The device consists of feathers embedded in a silicone gel mounted over a checkered pattern, and with a video camera beneath. Stroking the feathers warps the gel and alters the amount of light that filters through the pattern to be picked up by the camera.

A computer can then calculate the pressure being exerted on the feathers displays it on a screen. Saga says this might ultimately be used to give robots a more human-like ability to touch and feel.

Walk this way

Hiroo Iwata, from the University of Tsukuba in Japan, and other groups are exploring different aspects of virtual reality. Iwata has previous developed multi-directional treadmills and powered roller skates, and demonstrated a new idea called String Walker at SIGGRAPH.

This system tracks a user’s walk, allowing them explore a virtual environment on foot. Wheeled sandals keep the user walking on the same spot, while a network of strings and motors track the motion of their feet with each step.

The whole setup is mounted on a turntable, so that a person can swivel on the spot. See a video of . Some participants at SIGGRAPH 2007 said the necessary walking motion took some getting used to.