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Space Robotics Science

Swarming And Hopping Planetary Robots 73

Posted by Zonk from the game-over-man-game-over dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Recently Dr. Penelope Boston (U. New Mexico) and Dr. Steven Dubowsky (MIT) discussed their NASA advances to develop 'hopping microbots' capable of exploring hazardous terrain, including underground caves and planetary extremes. 'We came up with the idea of many, many, tiny little spheres, about the size of tennis balls (slide show), that essentially hop, almost like Mexican jumping beans. They store up muscle energy, so to speak, and then they boink themselves off in various directions. That's how they move...They behave as a swarm [of 1000s]. They relate to each other using very simple rules, but that produces a great deal of flexibility in their collective behavior that enables them to meet the demands of unpredictable and hazardous terrain.' Test prototypes available in March will initially explore terrestrial lava tubes."
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Swarming And Hopping Planetary Robots More

Swarming And Hopping Planetary Robots

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  • Aeon Flux? (Score:4, Funny)

    by tbcpp ( 797625 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @02:40AM (#14227145)
    Is it just me, or have these people been watching Aeon Flux a little to much? Haven't seen the movie, but the scene from the trailer of the hundreds of explosive balls running down the hall comes to mind.

  • Boink.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10, 2005 @02:41AM (#14227148)
    Yet again, scientific progress goes "boink".

  • Poor choice of words? (Score:5, Funny)

    by core plexus ( 599119 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @02:42AM (#14227153) Homepage
    "...and then they boink themselves off..."

    Let the adolescent humor begin!

    Iceworms are real [suvalleynews.com]

  • What would Heisenberg think? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nickgrieve ( 87668 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @03:02AM (#14227190) Journal
    I like this idea. Personally, I think that remote planetary rover designers often put the cart before the horse. We often send the robotic equivalent of (evolutionary speaking) contemporary insects out to explore planets, when perhaps we should look at methods employed by fungus, plants, one celled organisms for inspection for somewhat to more so reliable designs...

    As for Heisenburg,... I can see a lot of NASA guys sitting around the data feeds... "hrmm... it seems that the surface of venus is covered in 1000's of pock marks the size of tennis balls..." :-)
    • Breakage and disorientation are a given.

      If you want to move around on rough terrain, look at what the military uses. The recent 6-wheel rovers match of pretty well, with appropriate adjustments for running a motor without oxygen and diesel supplies of course.

      Hopping around is silly. In some places you might prefer a tracked vehicle. In some places you could use buoyancy like a submarine or blimp, perhaps like a sea glider if you can vary buoyancy enough. In some places you could use a jet (supplying oxidize

  • I, ... (obligatory) (Score:4, Funny)

    by dorkygeek ( 898295 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @03:03AM (#14227191) Journal
    ... for one, welcome our new jumping and boinking overlords.

    And hey, even better, they do in fact come in clusters! Now in only wonder if in Soviet Russia, swarms are boinking you!?

  • lets hope Galen can get there in time to take out the control centre then ;)

    (b5 - crusade , 1x10 reference for those who dont get it)

    • ...take out the control centre...

      Actually, anime references aside, one of the beautiful things about swarm robotics is that in many cases there is decidedly not a central intelligence. Each unit acts on its own according to relatively simple rules and a relatively low amount of communication with neighbors. The result is often very robust and surprisingly versatile. We are actually taking a cue from biology here. Think of a school of fish... each individual fish having relatively limited "computin

  • To win a bet... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ten bucks says that this whole concept was invented just so some NASA scientist could win a bet that he could get the phrase "they boink themselves off" into an official press release :)

  • Galactic boinking (Score:5, Funny)

    by HermanAB ( 661181 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @03:33AM (#14227255)
    At least, this one thing that Douglas Adams didn't think of.

  • balls roll down (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tronicum ( 617382 ) * on Saturday December 10, 2005 @03:35AM (#14227265)
    I like the idea but if it just a swarm of balls, they might inspect a cave one time only. If like 1000 Balls hop arround and 200 explore a cave, they might all roll down into a big hole all together. They need some rover or insect like master that collects their sensor information. If they are the size of a tennis ball they can't store much energy and can not send their data for long distance.
    • what about having a communitacion gateway?

      Swarm robots send that to the gateway, and the gateweay re-send the data...

      Any way, those robots must come out from something else :)

    • Re:balls roll down (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Jarnin ( 925269 )
      Wouldn't rolling down into a big hole sort of be the point? I mean, if you want to explore a possible cave system, you're going to want to know where the cave leads, how far down it goes, how much area it covers, and so on. Seems like rolling and bouncing probes would be a good way to map a cave.

      I think a better means of transportation would be something like a dandelion seed; something that was light enough to have the wind pick it up and blow it around, but could anchor itself (grow roots) if an area prov
    • I heard there was enough energy in one act of boinking to send a broadcast to Alpha Centauri and back.
    • Something leads me to believe that, seeing as though the researchers are considering sending these to investigate lava tubes, they will be considering a means by which the robots will be able to get out of the tubes...

      Having said that, I agree completely that there will certainly be the possibility of the robots getting stuck or damaged by different terrain or obstacles. However, this is something swarms are good at dealing with!

      First of all, having one bot getting stuck or damaged isn't catastrophic -t

      • In any case, the point is this -swarms are BETTER at dealing with tough conditions than individual bots. Secondly, having a master bot defeats almost all purposes of having a swarm in the first place. It would be better to just design the swarm in such a way that they are able to gather themselves up at a meeting point when the time comes.

        While this is true, the best approach is likely to be one that combines the swarming and master bot approaches. During normal operations, individual bots maneuver indepe

        • While this is true, the best approach is likely to be one that combines the swarming and master bot approaches. During normal operations, individual bots maneuver independently, but when the situation warrants, the swarm coalesces into a master bot that can meet greater challenges.

          I don't know if its the result of my own intellectual deficiencies, but I had a lot of trouble getting any meaningful content out of your post. What exactly is a "normal operation", versus a "greater challenge"? More importantl

          • I don't know if its the result of my own intellectual deficiencies, but I had a lot of trouble getting any meaningful content out of your post.

            The key to understanding my post is in the punch line:

            And I'll form the head!

            I make no claim about whether or not that constitutes meaningful content.

  • If you want a sphere shaped information-gathering robot, look no further [starshipmodeler.com].
  • initially explore terrestrial lava tubes

    I must get more sleep. I would have sworn that said Java tubes. Exploring tubes of coffee?? Exploring tubes of a programming language?? Hrmm...

  • Long after humankind is dead, some new race will explore the galaxy. This new race will find 1000s of small balls covering half the worlds they land on to explore and wonder, "What the f*ck?"

  • Isn't the main issue how to power them? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @09:15AM (#14228017) Homepage Journal
    Isn't the main issue how to power the balls? They'll need energy to hop around, make measurements and communicate.

    I don't think the ad hoc wireless network aspect of things is likely to be the hard part: if people can solve the power problems, Siemens, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and Philips will likely take care of the network/software part in the course of solving our more earthly problems.

    E.g. a security system built of these would seem to have wide appeal.
  • we don't make them self replicating and capable of lift-off. Among many galactic societies, that is considered the ultimate rudeness.

  • beans? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hugonz ( 20064 )
    Mexican jumping beans.

    Which are completely unheard of in Mexico.

  • [dramatic chord]
    ARTHUR:
    What?
    TIM:
    There he is!
    ARTHUR:
    Where?
    TIM:
    There!
    ARTHUR:
    What, behind the rabbit?
    TIM:
    It is the rabbit.
    ARTHUR:
    You silly sod!
    TIM:
    What?
    ARTHUR:
    You got us all worked up!
    TIM:
    Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
  • What were those probes called? Dorothy-1 and Dorothy-2 I think. They release all those metal tennis balls into the swirling vortex and they quickly get nifty graphs on their laptop computers.
  • I don't believe the comment that they are torturing and killing the child. So what the heck are those giant swiss cheese balls doing?

  • It's been done, at Sandia (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:21PM (#14228791) Homepage
    Somebody at NASA didn't do their homework. Very similar spherical hopping robots [sandia.gov] were developed in 1997 at Sandia, with DARPA funding. They actually work; they're not just a proposed project with pretty pictures. "Where we want to go is Mars and the moon. With a hopper, you could go much farther from the lander. You could throw out a dozen of these to search in all directions."

    There's some interest in this as a new generation of land mine. Dump out a few hundred of these and they wait for a target, like a convoy, to come along. When they find a suitable target, the hopper that found it calls for backup, and the hoppers in the neighborhood swarm to attack the target.

    • Somebody at NASA didn't do their homework. Very similar spherical hopping robots were developed in 1997 at Sandia, with DARPA funding. They actually work; they're not just a proposed project with pretty pictures.

      That effort suffers from a fatal flaw: it does not fund the proponents of the current effort. With enough funding, this new effort's proponents should be able to overcome this shortcoming.

    • Talk about a fraggin' "gang bang"... Gives new meaning to the song "I love a man in a yoo-nee-form"... Soldiers better dress up as nurses in white skirts and spray red crosses on their vehicles...
    • e...?

      Maybe somebody at Sandia was hopping, ummm, hoping to generate an offical press release:

      "Sandia to SandBlast Your Ass in Our New Minefield"...

  • DARPA has a similar product (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chenjeru ( 916013 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:42PM (#14228895)
    This reminds me of DARPA's self-healing minefield, where mines communicate with each other and 'hop' to fill any gaps in their net. DARPA's page here: http://www.darpa.mil/ato/programs/SHM/ [darpa.mil]

  • Mod -1 Off Topic (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm sorry. Wouldn't this article been better off posted @ BoingBoing?
  • UNM is University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, with about
    30,000 students. New Mexico Tech (New Mexico Institute of
    Mining and Technology), also known as the New Mexico School of
    Mines, is a land grant mining school about 75 miles south of
    UNM, where truly crunchy geology and geophysics things happen.

    Dr. Boston was in a documentary on PBS, (Nova, October 2002).
    She seems to be riding a crest of research that is shaking up
    the science of cave formation, postulating that caves are
    created as a consequence of prima

  • Robot Sex? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @05:22PM (#14230207) Homepage
    "then they boink themselves...They relate to each other using very simple rules..."

    Sounds like human behavior to me.

    These things could pass the Turing Test.
    • I was going to ask if these things run Linux. I was going to : then I noticed that there were 2 inventors - 1 female and 1 male. Now I'm sure that we're talking human behaviour here. These 2 learnéd souls have in fact discovered how to make .... well, babies (the description of their behavior fits exactly). Have we discovered a "cruelty to children" issue here ? Will Doctor Penny be able to supply the demand by herself ? Have we discovered scientifically justified polygamy ? How does Doctor Steve

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