One day, astronauts may well walk on the surface of Mars. But until that day comes, the Red Planet belongs to the robots.
One of the latest in a long line of automated astronauts is a four-limbed robot named LEMUR (Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot).
Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) LEMUR is guided by its own onboard artificial intelligence and can scale sheer rock cliffs, using clusters of tiny hooks embedded in each of its 16 ‘fingers.’
LEMUR’s climbing ability means it can explore areas where its more conventional wheeled cousins can never reach.
Originally developed as a repair robot for the International Space Station, LEMUR has been used as a test bed for technologies that will one day soon help a robotic rover penetrate the mysterious Martian highlands, which cannot be exported by conventional landers.
On a 2019 test run in Death Valley LEMUR chose its own route up a forbidding cliff, scanning the rock face it went to seek out the fossils of aquatic creatures that lived in the sea that once covered the arid desert.
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And specialist rock-climber LEMUR already has a younger, more versatile relative. RoboSimian is a monkey robot with extraordinary capabilities.
Robosimian, which took fifth place in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, can drive a car, open a door, use a drill and walk up stairs or on rocky ground.
Brett Kennedy, principal investigator for RoboSimian at JPL, said after the competition that he was thrilled with the monkey robots performance: ”I couldn't be more proud of our team and their performance in such challenging circumstances," said. "The robot didn't fall once, and we never had to reset it, confirming how versatile and dependable RoboSimian really is.”
Also one single limb from LEMUR, codenamed Ice Worm, has also been developed as a standalone – or more accurately wiggle-alone – explorer.
Ice Worm slowly inches along complex terrain, anchoring itself to take samples whenever it comes across something interesting. It’s part of a series of robot probes being developed to explore the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter, which are believed to have oceans under their frozen crusts.
