Biologically inspired solutions for robotic surface mobility

摘要

The application of biomimetic locomotion to the Martian surface offers the possibility of increased robustness and failure tolerance. This study, funded by ESA/ESTEC under ARIADNA-program, focused on new innovations from nature to develop a novel system to provide robust and efficient locomotion system to be used for exploring of foreign planets. When considering novel systems one should consider locomotion in context of surface properties of the target planet as well as power generation methods that would utilize local power generation resources like wind or heat. Requirements on mobility are directly derived from the scientific requirements. The required distance between measurement points drives the design of the locomotion system and in particular its speed. This latter in turn together with the minimum number of measurements drives the minimum time of presence on the surface needed to accomplish the scientific goal. Surface geography and roughness, presence of stones, cracks or soft sand set requirements for robot’s mechanical locomotion capability and navigation capabilities. On a planet surface there usually exist numerically much more small obstacles than large ones. Therefore navigation needs for a moving robot increase rapidly as robot size decreases, unless robot mobility is increased significantly to overcome the obstacles. To be a robust and reliable moving robot it must either: a) be small in size and navigate with high performance (like a snake or a mouse etc.), b) be small in size and have exceptional locomotion capability to overcome any obstacles (i.e. climbing, flying, jumping, like a grasshopper) or c) be large enough to overcome most of the expected obstacles (and have some navigation to avoid the largest rocks or cracks, like an elephant).