Send in the swarmbots
Posted: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 7:50 PM by Alan Boyle
Researchers are working on baseball-sized robotic probes that could be thrown down by the swarmful to explore deep canyons and lava tubes on Mars - or look for disaster survivors amid ruins on Earth. The NASA-funded project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology serves as one more reminder that robotic technologies developed for space exploration come in handy on the home planet as well.
Gus Frederick / MIT |
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Illustration shows how the mini-probe would look.
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This week's release from MIT emphasizes the interplanetary applications for the little hopping mini-probes. Each of the sensor-equipped spheres would be powered by its own micro-fuel cell. The concept envisions dropping thousands of the devices onto rugged terrain that would be impossible for rovers such as the present-day Spirit and Opportunity.
"They would start to hop, bounce and roll and distribute themselves across the surface of the planet, exploring as they go, taking scientific data samples," Steven Dubowsky, the MIT professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research team, explained in a news release.
Even if some of the swarming probes lost their way or were taken out of commission, the others would be able to collect and correlate data to send back to the mothership.
Each probe would weigh about 4 ounces (100 grams), and would be outfitted with artificial muscles so that it could hop as much as 5 feet (1.5 meters) up to once a minute. The spherical shape would allow the probes to bounce and roll as well. A swarm of 1,000 hopping bots, which would collectively weigh no more than Spirit or Opportunity, could cover 50 square miles in a month, Dubowsky said.
Dubowsky's team is working with famed cave biologist Penelope Boston to figure out what would be required to explore Martian lava tubes, which are thought to be prime locations for seeking traces of ancient or perhaps even modern microbial life. This QuickTime video shows how the bots might make their way through a lava tube. To get Boston's side of the story, check out this interview in Astrobiology magazine.
MIT researcher James McLurkin is a pioneer of the "swarmbot" concept, and European researchers have been working on the concept as well. Dubowsky told me today that the artificial-intelligence aspect of swarm behavior is certainly "an enabling technology" for his team's approach - but that other technologies will have to come into play as well. One of the big ones is creating a micro-fuel cell small enough to fit inside the mini-probes.
Dubowski's project is being funded as a Phase 2 project for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. Such projects typically get up to $400,000 over an 18- to 24-month period, to develop technologies that could be applied to space missions 10 years into the future. So although Dubowski's team is developing prototypes for field testing here on Earth, there are not yet any plans to add swarmbots to the schedule for a specific Mars mission.
If the technology for hopping swarmbots is perfected, it's a good bet that they'd be deployed for earthly tasks before they invade Mars. For example, bucketfuls of bots could be dropped onto the rubble of a disaster scene to look for survivors, or they could be rolled into hidey-holes to look for terrorists. Swarmbots might also come in handy for sniffing out explosive devices buried beneath Iraqi roads.
For another example of robotic work that could have earthly as well as interplanetary applications, check out this past posting on the Mars Robotic Construction Challenge. And if you have more bright ideas for putting space robots to work on Earth, feel free to register your comments below.
