The agility of the lemur monkeys has inspired NASA scientists to develop four-legged robots to navigate the Martian sloughs that are too steep for wheeled vehicles.
Popular Sciences
The agility of the lemur monkeys has inspired NASA scientists to develop four-legged robots to navigate the Martian sloughs that are too steep for wheeled vehicles.
To explore the geology of the north of Mars, a constant and agile climber is needed, who is able to operate on cliffs and skilfully sample the ground. A living creature such as a human or a monkey could have successfully performed the task, but on Mars there is no air to breathe and the temperature is often below zero. Because of this, engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, developed an efficient imitation called Lemur IIB, or as it is officially called, "Mechanical robot with limbs for methods and service".
The Lemur was originally intended for the maintenance of the space station, but the images of the inaccessible cliffs on the Martian soil, which were photographed in 2004 by the Mars rover Opportunity, led to an additional task being assigned to the robot, which is equipped with legs instead of wheels.
In order for the robot to be lighter (it weighs only 8 kg) and be able to travel on other planets, the scientists equipped it with only four legs instead of six. In the next generation of the robot, it will be possible to install a drill in each leg to improve the grip on rocks and to collect soil samples while climbing.
Brett Kennedy, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that the ability to use all four limbs as legs for climbing or as hands for operating tools, with the same degree of efficiency, gives the robot unprecedented flexibility. The next challenge will be to transfer the lemur from XNUMXD drawings to XNUMXD rock climbing.
