“NASA’s EELS Robot: Exploring Saturn’s Moon Enceladus with Autonomous Snake-Like Movement”

2023-05-14 11:44:00

NASA develops a robot with a length of 4m and a weight of 100kg… move the teeth

Autonomous driving, not remote control… Exercise ability test in snowy mountains and sandy fields

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A ‘robot snake’ being developed by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is moving on snowy ground. It is 4 m long and weighs 100 kg. Courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

# On the surface of Jupiter’s moon ‘Europa’, the expedition members gaze out the window of the spaceship they are staying in with a firm expression. What they are looking at is a fellow member of the crew who started an outdoor investigation alone outside the spaceship a while ago. In the absence of information about the unfamiliar celestial body, Europa, field investigations are inevitably risky. Because of this, he went into a state of hyper-tension. However, the hearts of the members who have stepped onto the surface of Europa are filled with the joy of stepping into a new world rather than worrying about their own safety. He hastily scoops the crushed ice and puts it in a cylinder slightly larger than a film canister. Then he puts the biomass sensor on his bowl.

After a while, a wonderful message pops up on the sensor that a single-celled organism similar to algae has been identified. This is the moment when life was first identified outside the Earth. All members of the expedition team are excited about the discovery that changed the history of mankind. At that moment, something wriggles in the ice under the feet of the team member who was conducting an outdoor investigation. The ice breaks in an instant without a chance to recognize the identity, and the crew is sucked into the sea under the ice.

Sci-fi film released in 2013 <유로파 리포트>is a scene from Europa is a real moon of Jupiter. The space science community believes that there may be an underground ocean on Europa, whose surface is covered with ice. In particular, it does not rule out the possibility of life living in the sea.

It contains interesting content <유로파 리포트>There is one questionable passage in the line. The point is that a person willingly took part in an outdoor investigation, not knowing what dangers might arise. At the level of science and technology to send a manned probe to Europa, it is natural to send robots ahead of humans.

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An image of a robotic snake being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) entering and swimming in the subterranean sea of ​​Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

■ Total length 4m… jointed torso

Recently, researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced through official data that they are indeed developing robots that will operate on other celestial bodies. The place where this robot named ‘EELS’ will be put is the Saturn moon ‘Enceladus’. Like Europa, Enceladus is a celestial body that is assumed to have an ice-covered surface and an underground ocean inside.

The most striking thing about this robot is its appearance. In the video released by JPL on the Internet, the robot has a body with 10 short rods connected in a straight line like a train through joints. It is 4 m long and weighs 100 kg. It is a big and heavy ‘robot snake’.

According to JPL, the robot snake will break through obstacles on the ground and eventually enter the subterranean sea to swim.

The body of the robot snake has several spiral teeth. A total of 48 motors turn these cogs. With the rotational force generated at this time, the body rolls like a wrestler. You can also repeatedly rock your body in an ‘S’ shape with your stomach flat on the floor. All of them are movements for movement on land or in the sea. Power comes from electricity. Enceladus has geysers where water vapor rises from the sea and erupts out of the icy crust, and the robot snake will use this as an entrance to enter the sea. The ultimate goal is the search for marine life.

■ Autonomous operation without remote control… equipped with lidar

Robot snakes operate autonomously without remote control by humans. The reason is the distance. Earth and Enceladus are about 1.2 billion kilometers apart. It takes a total of two hours at the shortest time for the control center in the earth to emit radio waves to issue work orders and receive a report on whether or not the instructions have been followed. The situation is different from the moon, which can communicate with the earth in a few seconds. This means that at the Enceladus exploration site, it is much better for the robot to decide the direction to move on its own and solve it on its own even if it encounters difficulties. To this end, the robot snake has a ‘Lida’. Lidar is a sensor that shoots lasers to find out the shape and location of objects in front. Recently, it is being installed in self-driving cars on Earth. The researchers plan to attach two or more cameras to the robot snake, giving it the ability to see objects in three dimensions. Here, a high-performance computer is also installed so that the robot snake can select an optimized movement path on its own.

The researchers built a prototype of the robot. Since last year, it has been test-driving in mountains full of snow and ice, flatlands where rocks and sand coexist, sheer cliffs, inside steep craters, and rugged lava caves.

JPL researcher Hiro Ono, who is part of the research team, said through official NASA data, “There is a lot of information that can make a rover with four wheels.” I did my best to study,” he said. The research team plans to focus on maximizing the robot snake’s motor skills this year and next year. After that, it will work on selecting scientific equipment to be mounted on the robot snake.

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