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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."

11 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Aeon Flux? by tbcpp · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it just me, or have these people been watching Aeon Flux a little to much? Haven't seen the movie, but the scene from the trailer of the hundreds of explosive balls running down the hall comes to mind.

    --
    Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
  2. Boink.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yet again, scientific progress goes "boink".

  3. Poor choice of words? by core+plexus · · Score: 4, Funny
    "...and then they boink themselves off..."

    Let the adolescent humor begin!

    Iceworms are real

    1. Re:Poor choice of words? by sourcery · · Score: 5, Funny

      Moral of the story: It takes balls to go cave exploring on alien worlds.

      --
      Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
  4. What would Heisenberg think? by nickgrieve · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like this idea. Personally, I think that remote planetary rover designers often put the cart before the horse. We often send the robotic equivalent of (evolutionary speaking) contemporary insects out to explore planets, when perhaps we should look at methods employed by fungus, plants, one celled organisms for inspection for somewhat to more so reliable designs...

    As for Heisenburg,... I can see a lot of NASA guys sitting around the data feeds... "hrmm... it seems that the surface of venus is covered in 1000's of pock marks the size of tennis balls..." :-)

  5. I, ... (obligatory) by dorkygeek · · Score: 3, Funny
    ... for one, welcome our new jumping and boinking overlords.

    And hey, even better, they do in fact come in clusters! Now in only wonder if in Soviet Russia, swarms are boinking you!?

    --
    Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
  6. Galactic boinking by HermanAB · · Score: 4, Funny

    At least, this one thing that Douglas Adams didn't think of.

    --
    Oh well, what the hell...
  7. balls roll down by tronicum · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like the idea but if it just a swarm of balls, they might inspect a cave one time only. If like 1000 Balls hop arround and 200 explore a cave, they might all roll down into a big hole all together. They need some rover or insect like master that collects their sensor information. If they are the size of a tennis ball they can't store much energy and can not send their data for long distance.

    1. Re:balls roll down by David_Shultz · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Something leads me to believe that, seeing as though the researchers are considering sending these to investigate lava tubes, they will be considering a means by which the robots will be able to get out of the tubes...

      Having said that, I agree completely that there will certainly be the possibility of the robots getting stuck or damaged by different terrain or obstacles. However, this is something swarms are good at dealing with!

      First of all, having one bot getting stuck or damaged isn't catastrophic -the system continues functioning, just with slightly lower efficiency. Secondly, if a bot gets stuck, it could send out a danger signal to nearby bots. As a matter of fact, such a system is probably not even necessary,because chances are, the swarms will be designed with the following rule: steer clear of nearby bots. Why? To cover a wider area. (staying within sensor range of at least a few bots though). So by default, if one bot gets into a tough situation, the others avoid it. Of course, there will probably be a grouping rule as well -steer to maintain the same heading as the average of the group. We want these guys staying together and functioning as a whole unit.

      In any case, the point is this -swarms are BETTER at dealing with tough conditions than individual bots. Secondly, having a master bot defeats almost all purposes of having a swarm in the first place. It would be better to just design the swarm in such a way that they are able to gather themselves up at a meeting point when the time comes.

  8. 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.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  9. 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/

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