Hundreds of these should be able to bounce and roll around on Mars - ABC News

Hundreds of these should be able to bounce and roll around on Mars See video of what could be NASA’s next Mars-rover.

It looks like a failed attempt to look up an igloo tent is perhaps NASA’s next Mars-rover.

Super Ball Bot called the strange robot.

It represents a step away from the classical, rigid robots, the so-called “tensegrity robots,” writes the American space agency on its website.

construction consists of thin rods and cables, and NASA is now looking for that hundreds of such small, robust and cheap robots can explore celestial objects with demanding conditions.

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Tensigrity

Tensigrity can be translated into Norwegian as voltage integrity, and the term was first used by the inventor Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s.

principle is that the rods in construction held together in a web of cables that are in tension, with no stiff interconnects.

Because of the particular structure, all the members being subjected to a uniform load, which makes the structure extremely solid, despite its low weight, and vaklvorne appearance.

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pop-landing

NASA believes such a structure suitable for landing on planets and moons.

They can be sent to the planet from a spacecraft and cushion the fall by bouncing on the surface, without parachutes and landing rockets.

core in the middle of the structure, which contains instruments and hardware, protected by tensigrity structure, says NASA scientist Vytas SunSpiral (it’s actually his real name) to the site IEEE Spectrum.

To avoid the extremely complex, energy-intensive and risky operations that are necessary to land the classic robots on the surface, and certainly save NASA employees in the control room for a great deal of stress.

Super Ball Bot will then be able to change shape, to roll off towards whatever it will investigate.

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Demanding

NASA envisions that dozens, perhaps hundreds of small robots of this type can bounce and roll around on the surface.

with reduced cost and risk may also have the opportunity to examine the bodies which we know less about the condition of the surface, making use of expensive single robots risky.

It allows for examination of very inhospitable places, like Saturns moon Titan, writes NASA.

to obtain such a structure to behave as you want, however, is not easy. Researchers are experimenting now with different types of computer programs to control it.

Among other tests to the algorithms that will give the robot the ability to develop their own behavior, and computer programs inspired by neuroscience.

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