Imagine fetching in the gravity of the moon, which is six times that of Earth.
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| LEAP (Legged Exploration of the Aristarchus Plateau) is one dogged idea to explore the moon in the future. (Image credit: ETH Zürich/Robotics Systems Labs (RSL)) |
It's possible that future lunar explorers will also be looking for scientific answers as well as barking at the moon.
Future moon missions may employ dog-shaped robots because man's best friend is already an agile explorer. On Earth, dogs are always eager to jump, dig, and explore elevated terrain.
For the Artemis program, which is led by NASA and could land astronauts in the 2020s, researchers now hope to replicate that agility on the moon.
LEAP, or Legged Exploration of the Aristarchus Plateau, is the name of the robot dog idea; The European Space Agency, or ESA, which is funding the project, hopes to soon investigate one of the moon's regions, Aristarchus.
In a statement (opens in new tab), Patrick Bambach, an engineer at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, stated, "With the robot, we can investigate key features to study the geologic history and evolution of the moon, like the ejecta around craters, fresh impact sites, and collapsed lava tubes, where material may not have been altered by space weathering and other processes."
ESA's European Large Logistics Lander (EL3), which is tasked with sending payloads and experiments to the moon's surface beginning in the late 2020s, may carry the dog-like robot on its surface.Anymal, a four-legged robot developed at ETH Zürich and its spinoff ANYbotics, serves as the model for the dog shape.
This is lunar exploration like we've never seen it before, thanks to ANYmal's varied gaits, ability to flip back up if it falls, and agility when climbing steep slopes. Anymal can even use its legs to flip rocks over to see what's underneath and dig channels in the soil.
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| The LEAP rover is based on the legged robot, ANYmal, developed at ETH Zürich and its spin-off ANYbotics. (Image credit: ETH Zürich/ETH Zürich/Robotics System Lab (RSL)) |
Bambach stated, "Traditional rovers have limitations, but they have enabled great discoveries on the moon and Mars."With wheels, exploring terrain with loose soil, large boulders, or slopes greater than 15 degrees is especially challenging. For instance, the Mars rover Spirit's mission was halted when it became stuck in the sand."
Although the research is still in its infancy, the team has so far used the robot in a virtual environment designed to resemble a moon's surface, including gravity and just properties. Naturally, the dog was also taken for a walk outside.
The robot's intelligence in its initial tests surprised researchers. According to Bambach, "ANYmal started to use a jumping-like mode of locomotion, just as the Apollo astronauts did — realizing that jumping can be more energy efficient than walking" on the moon-like surface, where gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth.
The team hopes that the finished robot dog will weigh less than 110 pounds (50 kilograms), with scientific payloads accounting for one-fifth of that. AnyMAL will be required to carry anything from radar to spectrometers to determine the composition of nearby rocks using multispectral sensors. The date of the first flight has not yet been specified.
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