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Swarming And Hopping Planetary Robots

Posted by Zonk on from the game-over-man-game-over dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Recently Dr. Penelope Boston (U. New Mexico) and Dr. Steven Dubowsky (MIT) discussed their NASA advances to develop 'hopping microbots' capable of exploring hazardous terrain, including underground caves and planetary extremes. 'We came up with the idea of many, many, tiny little spheres, about the size of tennis balls (slide show), that essentially hop, almost like Mexican jumping beans. They store up muscle energy, so to speak, and then they boink themselves off in various directions. That's how they move...They behave as a swarm [of 1000s]. They relate to each other using very simple rules, but that produces a great deal of flexibility in their collective behavior that enables them to meet the demands of unpredictable and hazardous terrain.' Test prototypes available in March will initially explore terrestrial lava tubes."

6 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Re:balls roll down by bubulubugoth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    what about having a communitacion gateway?

    Swarm robots send that to the gateway, and the gateweay re-send the data...

    Any way, those robots must come out from something else :)

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    Â_Â
  2. Re:balls roll down by Jarnin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wouldn't rolling down into a big hole sort of be the point? I mean, if you want to explore a possible cave system, you're going to want to know where the cave leads, how far down it goes, how much area it covers, and so on. Seems like rolling and bouncing probes would be a good way to map a cave.

    I think a better means of transportation would be something like a dandelion seed; something that was light enough to have the wind pick it up and blow it around, but could anchor itself (grow roots) if an area proved to be worthy of more investigation.

  3. Isn't the main issue how to power them? by putko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Isn't the main issue how to power the balls? They'll need energy to hop around, make measurements and communicate.

    I don't think the ad hoc wireless network aspect of things is likely to be the hard part: if people can solve the power problems, Siemens, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and Philips will likely take care of the network/software part in the course of solving our more earthly problems.

    E.g. a security system built of these would seem to have wide appeal.

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    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  4. beans? by Hugonz · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Mexican jumping beans.

    Which are completely unheard of in Mexico.

  5. It's been done, at Sandia by Animats · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Somebody at NASA didn't do their homework. Very similar spherical hopping robots were developed in 1997 at Sandia, with DARPA funding. They actually work; they're not just a proposed project with pretty pictures. "Where we want to go is Mars and the moon. With a hopper, you could go much farther from the lander. You could throw out a dozen of these to search in all directions."

    There's some interest in this as a new generation of land mine. Dump out a few hundred of these and they wait for a target, like a convoy, to come along. When they find a suitable target, the hopper that found it calls for backup, and the hoppers in the neighborhood swarm to attack the target.

  6. DARPA has a similar product by chenjeru · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This reminds me of DARPA's self-healing minefield, where mines communicate with each other and 'hop' to fill any gaps in their net. DARPA's page here: http://www.darpa.mil/ato/programs/SHM/

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    Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers