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Insect Robots For Mars Exploration

Posted by Hemos on from the looking-more-deeply dept.

destructor writes "Thanks to these guys, I found this little robotic article. Aided by NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, flying insect robots are looking at a life on our "little red planet", Mars in order to procure some atmospheric information and samples. Since conventional aircraft are unable to precisely navigate the Mars surface due to very thin air qualities, the robots actually have the ability to "move only their wings rapidly - while the body flies slowly", to ease sample collections." Space.com is carrying a piece on this.

7 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Wonder if they will try it here first by eaddict · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I always get a kick out of these stories about robots being used on other planets. Anyone have a NASA link of these things being tried in some of our (Earth) extreme environment? Also, why don't we do these robot things on the moon first before we spend a billion or so going a few miles down the road?

    --
    "If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
    1. Re:Wonder if they will try it here first by MobyTurbo · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Also, why don't we do these robot things on the moon first before we spend a billion or so going a few miles down the road?
      Because unlike Mars, the moon has *no* atmosphere. The flapping wings are meant to make the robot fly in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, they are useless on the Moon.
  2. Nature never fails to amaze me by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It blows my mind that something created thousands (if not millions ) of years ago by nature is versatile enough to be deployed for extraplanetary exploration.

    If nature did not come up with flapping wings as a method of flight, how long would it have taken humanity to come up with the idea?

    1. Re:Nature never fails to amaze me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We'd probably have come up with conventional flight a little sooner. Before the Wrights, most people had been trying to emulate a bird's wings. Obviously, they didn't know enough about flight or how a bird flies to be able to do it very well.

    2. Re:Nature never fails to amaze me by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From what I understand, we still don't fully understand how flapping wings fully work. Until recently, calculations on the lift provided by bees wings showed that they should crash and burn. I think, though, that without flapping-winged animals, we could have gotten there by studying fish, whose flexible bodies have far better propulsion than any of our fixed-shape vehicles nowadays.

      Anyway, more on-topic, I love the fact that they're so small - NASA could put a few thousand in a single payload, and even if 90% fail, we'd be able to closely map a *lot* of Mars' surface. I was thinking, though, that a better design might be something more grasshopper-like? In the low gravity and pressure, you'd think this would make more sense than trying to design something to fly, and take less energy than constant wing movement.

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    3. Re:Nature never fails to amaze me by SpinyNorman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The trouble with any ground bsed thing, particularly a small one, is that it's going to take forever to cover any interesting amount of territory, and in practice would likely fail somehow (reach end of life or get disabled by terrain) before it got too far.

      What I'd like to see would be some kind of self inflating blimp that could survey a lot of land and transmit back imaging info. Maybe a helium blimp or perhaps even a hot air one powered by solar electricity.

      What would be really cool would be if they had a public competition to allow one or two non-NASA designed bots to go along too. Fighting with the NASA bit would have to be a no-no, though!

  3. I really think this is the way to go... by wnknisely · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With the present success of the robotic drones in Afghanistan, the idea of using some sort of similar robot to explore difficult environments is looking seriously promising.

    There is of course the delay time in communication that makes it unlikely we'll be able to control the drones remotely from Earth - but that just makes it an interesting programing problem.

    Seriously - cheap disposable robots that don't need the kinds of life support systems (or return flight ticket) that human exploration needs makes a ton more sense then sending up an expensive and non-expendable team.

    Sure you don't get the kind of glamor exposure that a human explorer would get - but robots are clearly the best pragmatic and economical choice.

    --
    In illa quae ultra sunt