Robotic Inchworm Drill for Mars, Europa

Erik Baard writes " The NY Times (reg. blah) is currently an article on robotic inchworm drills. NASA is funding Honeybee Robotics' R&D to create an inchworming "underground rover" based in part on a steam pipe welding machine the company built for Con Ed (called the WISER). The autonomous robot (scroll here to the Inchworm Deep Drilling System -- http://www.honeybeerobotics.com/sample.htm) would reach *kilometers* into Mars or Jupiter's moon, Europa, where scientists expect to find liquid water, and just possibly, life. Other drill designs could go perhaps a meter down. The inchworm could either gnaw its way back to the surface, or lay a series of radio relay stations ("bread crumbs") to pass the data signal to an amplifier on the surface to communicate with Earth. Yeah, I'm a regular /.er. And yeah, the NYT online spelled my name wrong."

Comments

honeybeer obotics?

[Zayin]

http://www.honeybeerobotics.com/sample.htm

That domain name sure is easy to misinterpret... What's honeybeer anyway? (And yes, there are other ways to read it. :-)

This is a critical piece of technology!

[tolleyl]

There was another article on slashdot that discussed the upcoming reversal of earth's magnetic field (coincidently released shortly before a movie about the reversal of earth's magnetic field). If this inchworm research progresses well then when the reversal happens we'll be ready for it and won't have to have a last minute attempt to drill to the core with unproven technology and a crew consisting of a tormented captain, a comedic sidekick, several people who end up dying and a surprizingly attractive foreign 'scientist' who ends up hooking up with the captain before he tragically dies. This way we can have an overpriced government funded inchworm that will save the day with a boring military crew with plenty of time to spare. Let's prepare for the future!

you forgot one . . .

[misterhaan]

1) Does it attempt to backup and go around? 2) Drop into the cavern 3) ... survive the drop? 4) Get back to the surface?

5) Profit?

Robotic Itch Worms from Mars !?

[brejc8]

Life is much more exciting with dyslexia.

sniff

[bjtuna]

Erik Baard writes " The NY Times (reg. blah) is currently an article on robotic inchworm drills.

Welcome to Slashdot. Verbs are optional.

Re:Earth applications

[malakai]

Yeah, because drilling tunnels randomly between two points is childs play. I mean, what could go wrong? Not like anything else is buried underground....

And who cares if the 10$-15k rental equipment gets stuck under some highway. You can always shut down traffic, bring in the back hoe, break open the pavement, cart of 1/2 ton of concrete and asphalt, and retrieve the device...

The search and retrieve operation would only cost 300k or so.

Man, what world do you people live in? Have you ever tried to get trench permits from a city? And you think arbitrary tunnels will be looked more favorable on?

The EM spectrum is natures peace offering to us to stop fucking drilling holes in her. Lets get some FCC reform, turn the entire spectrum into a shared spectrum with frequency hoping recievers and auto-relays/routers in each consumer device, and use the nearly inifinte amount of bandwidth that electricity and magnetism provide us.

-malakai