Multirobot cliff climbing on low-gravity environments

2020

Curr Robot Rep

Self Cite

Purpose of Review The discovery of living organisms under extreme environmental conditions of pressure, temperature, and chemical composition on Earth has opened up the possibility of existence and persistence of life in extreme environment pockets across the solar system. These environments range from the many intriguing moons, to the deep atmospheres of Venus and even the giant gas planets, to the small icy worlds of comets and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). Exploring these environments can ascertain the range of conditions that can support life and can also identify planetary processes that are responsible for generating and sustaining habitable worlds. These environments are also time capsules into early formation of the solar system and will provide vital clues of how our early solar system gave way to the current planets and moons. Recent Findings Over the last few decades, numerous missions started with flyby spacecraft, followed by orbiting satellites and missions with orbiter/lander capabilities. Since then, there have been numerous missions that have utilized rovers of everincreasing size and complexity, equipped with state-of-the-art laboratories on wheels. Although current generations of rovers achieve mobility through wheels, there are fundamental limitations that prevent these rovers from accessing rugged environments, cliffs, canyons, and caves. These rugged environments are often the first places geologist look to observe stratification from geohistorical processes. There is an important need for new robot mobility solutions, like hopping, rolling, crawling, and walking that can access these rugged environments like cliffs, canyons, and caves. These new generations of rovers have some extraordinary capabilities including being able to grip onto rocks like NASA/JPL LEMUR 2, operate in swarms such as MIT's microbots, or have high-specific energy fuel cell power supply that is approximately 40-fold higher than conventional lithium ion batteries to Stanford/NASA JPL's Hedgehog which is able to hop and somersault in low-gravity environments such asteroids. All of these mobility options and supporting technologies have been proposed and developed to explore these hard-to-reach unconventional environments. Summary This article provides a review of the robotic systems developed over the past few decades, in addition to new state-of-the-art concepts that are leading contenders for future missions to explore extreme environments on Earth and off-world.

Section: Spherical Robots For Unconventional Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploration of Extreme Environments with Currentand Emerging Robot Systems

2020

Curr Robot Rep

Self Cite

“…We present an architecture of small, low-cost, modular spherical robot called SphereX that is designed for exploring extreme environments like caves, lava tubes, pits and canyons in low-gravity environments like the Moon, Mars, icy moons and asteroids (see Fig. 2) [3][4][5]17]. It consists of a mobility system to perform optimal exploration of these target environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics and Control of a Hopping Robot for Extreme Environment Exploration on the Moon and Mars

Gholap

2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference

2020

Self Cite

The next frontier in solar system exploration will be missions targeting extreme and rugged environments such as caves, canyons, cliffs and crater rims of the Moon, Mars and icy moons. These environments are time capsules into early formation of the solar system and will provide vital clues of how our early solar system gave way to the current planets and moons. These sites will also provide vital clues to the past and present habitability of these environments. Current landers and rovers are unable to access these areas of high interest due to limitations in precision landing techniques, need for large and sophisticated science instruments and a mission assurance and operations culture where risks are minimized at all costs. Our past work has shown the advantages of using multiple spherical hopping robots called SphereX for exploring these extreme environments. Our previous work was based on performing exploration with a human-designed baseline design of a SphereX robot. However, the design of SphereX is a complex task that involves a large number of design variables and multiple engineering disciplines. In this work we propose to use Automated Multidisciplinary Design and Control Optimization (AMDCO) techniques to find near optimal design solutions in terms of mass, volume, power, and control for SphereX for different mission scenarios. The implementation of AMDCO for SphereX design is a complex process because of complexity of modelling and implementation, discontinuities in the design space, and wide range of time scales and exploration objectives. Moreover, the design of SphereX will depend on target environment (e.g. gravity, temperature, radiation and surface properties), coordination complexity with increased number of robots, expected distance of exploration and expected mission time length. We address these issues by using machine learning in the form of Genetic Algorithms integrated with gradient-based optimization techniques to search through the design space and find pareto optimal solutions for a given mission task. Using this technology, it is now possible to perform end to end automated preliminary design of planetary robots for surface exploration.

“…Each robot is a 30 cm sphere of mass 3kg covered in microspines for gripping onto rugged surfaces and several robot attaches using passive tethers [29]. The robots secure itself to a slope using the microspine gripping actuators, and one by one each robot moves upwards/downwards by hopping up/down the slope [12,13]. We had also shown autonomous pathplanning and navigation of the robotic system in our past work [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coordination and Control of Multiple Climbing Robots in Transporting Heavy Loads through Extreme Terrain

Morad

AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum

2019

Self Cite

The discovery of ice deposits in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar North and South Pole Moon presents an important opportunity for In-Situ Resource Utilization. These ice deposits maybe the source for sustaining a lunar base or for enabling an interplanetary refueling station. These ice deposits also preserve a unique record of the geology and environment of their hosts, both in terms of impact history and the supply of volatile compounds, and so are of immense scientific interest. To date, these ice deposits have been studied indirectly and by remote active radar, but they need to be analyzed in-situ by robotic systems that can study the depths of the deposits, their purity and composition. However, these shadowed craters never see sunlight and are one of the coldest places in the solar system. NASA JPL proposed use of solar reflectors mounted on crater rims to project sunlight into the crater depths for use by ground robots. The solar reflectors would heat the crater base and vehicles positioned at the base sufficiently to survive the cold-temperatures. Our approach analyzes part of the logistics of the approach, with teams of robots climbing up and down to the crater to access the ice deposits. The mission will require robots to climb down extreme environments and carry large structures, including instruments and communication devices.