Asteroid Robot's Sticky Feet May Help Device Land On Space Rocks (VIDEO)

Asteroid robot could feature 'feet' like the ones developed by scientists at NASA/JPL.

By: InnovationNewsDaily Staff
Published: 05/20/2012 02:14 PM EDT on InnovationNewsDaily

A new biologically-inspired robot could one day crawl over the surface of an asteroid or Mars and gather samples for study using lots of tiny, mechanical "toes." Aaron Parness, a robotics researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, presented his gripper May 16 at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) annual robotics conference, IEEE's Spectrum magazine reported.

NASA and other countries' space agencies have sent several missions to observe asteroids. So far, however, NASA spacecraft haven't directly gathered samples from an asteroid. Parness' robotic feet would allow asteroid probes to cling to the surface of even small asteroids, whose weaker gravitational pull might put a traditional rolling or walking probe at risk of "accidentally jettisoning itself into space," Parness wrote in a paper. A future Mars or other planetary mission might also use a sticky-footed robot to scale cliffs, Parness wrote. 

One of the robotic feet Parness created consists of 16 fat, stubby toes arranged in a circle. Each toe has 12 "microspines," tiny steel hooks attached to a flexible suspension system. When the foot drags its microspines over the slightly rough surface of a rock, the hooks can attach to small dips or protrusions on the rock surface. 

Parness' tests showed his robotic feet can resist more than 100 Newtons, a unit of force. They could probably resist more, he wrote, but right now, the test consists of having someone use a robot foot to pick rocks up from the ground, so he's limited by the strongest person he can recruit to help. He's working on creating a machine to test heavier rocks, he wrote. 

He also found the foot can hold a drill to a basalt rock, boring out a sample half an inch (12 millimeters) in diameter which, during a mission, a probe could analyze or send back to Earth. The gripping drill works in several positions, including upside down and sticking straight out the side of the rock. 

Watch the feet at work in a video Parness made: 

Next, Parness will add feet like this to an 18-pound (eight-kilogram), four-limbed robot called the Lemur IIb, then test the Lemur's rock-climbing abilities in caves on Earth.

 Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

• Top 7 Useful Robots You Can Buy Right Now
• Why Asteroid Mining Makes Huge Dollars and Sense
• 10 Wildest Tries to Contact Aliens

Copyright 2012 InnovationNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Also on HuffPost:

Comments

[MetricCook]

01:46 PM on 05/27/2012

The rocks tested in video are fairly pitted, like to see gripping smoother surfaces.

[Kyle Noe]

03:56 AM on 05/23/2012

Thanks for giving the units in newtons. That's so helpful.

Neat stuff, anyway.

[Watching rock grow]

09:22 PM on 05/22/2012

Cool!

[Daniel Alman]

03:07 PM on 05/22/2012

I wonder is this sticky material capable of surviving the extreme hot/cold of space and is capable of attaching to an steroid with a dusty surface.

[Tumbriller]

07:26 PM on 05/22/2012

It's not sticky. It's little hooks.

[Reno Fickler]

01:48 PM on 05/21/2012

Since gravity is proportional to the mass of an object, one would think there would be almost none on a asteroid (unless you find a REALLY big one). The space craft they sent to circle one asteroid then travel to another, several years ago, had to be instrumental in these experiments. They even 'convinced' it to kinda land on the asteroid and send back info even though that wasn't part of the plan.
At 176 million miles away, I'd say that was phenomenal accomplishment. Couldn't they just pick on an asteroid that was primarily ferrous and use an electo-magnetic force to hold instruments in place while conducting experiments? Then lessen the magnetic attraction, move it, and reapply force for the next gig?

[DXM]

02:52 PM on 05/21/2012

But what if you wanted to study a non-ferrous asteroid? The overwhelming majority of asteroids have no iron exposed on their surface and something like this gripper would be needed especially on the smaller one with very weak gravity.

[Reno Fickler]

10:39 PM on 05/21/2012

I suggested a ferrous asteroid and electro-magnetism because the metals the fingers would probably be made of get pretty brittle at the temperatures encountered on the asteroid. Considering it probably orbited outside our solar system in deep space where the average temp is proported to be three degrees above absolute zero and wouldn't warm up that much in its path through our solar system. At three degrees Kelvin small pieces of metal fracture easily when force is applied.

[affejung]

08:32 PM on 05/27/2012

"Since gravity is proportional to the mass of an object,...."

Your statement is somewhat confusing. It is more technically correct to state that gravity is an attractive force between two masses. There is no gravitational attraction if there is only one mass. The force of attraction, F = G*m1*m2/r^2, where F is the attractive force in newtons (N), G is the universal gravitation constant = 6.67384(80) x 10^-11 N.m^2/kg^2, m1 & m2 are the masses of the two objects in kilograms (kg) and r is the distance between them in metres (m).

Gravity is to mass like electrostatic attraction/repulsion is to charged particles. Magnetic attraction would be different. It is an "ability" of moving charged particles (electrons) being able to align the orbital electrons of atoms in near-by space in the same direction the moving particles are going. The electrons in the orbit of the iron atom just happen to be very easy to align. In addition the moving particles can cause the electrons in orbit to be pulled to them, actually pulling the whole atom along. Thus the ability of a magnet to attract iron.

Even at 280 Gm distance there would still be a gravitational attraction between the two masses, even if small.

[Reno Fickler]

01:55 PM on 05/28/2012

I am sure not informed enough on the subject to dispute what you say. Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained on a program on H2 that 'they' were beginning to think that "gravity has more to do with one object being 'pushed' toward another."
I 'kinda' got what he said by the larger object making a bigger 'dent' in the space/time continuum and the smaller object almost 'falling' toward it. That's a poor explanation, but have you heard anything on those thoughts?? Mr. Tyson seems to have some pretty sound theories on these things. He's on my Bucket List.

[Lahonda]

11:40 AM on 05/21/2012

Clings almost as well as my last girlfriend.

[DXM]

10:17 AM on 05/21/2012

"Parness' tests showed his robotic feet can resist more than 100 Newtons, a unit of force."

Obviously the author wasn't mathematics/physics literate enough to do a conversion for those not familiar with the MKS-flavor of the metric system (i.e. most of the people in the US - the world's only major holdout of the metric system). Anyway, 100 Newtons is the equivalent of about 22.5 pounds of force - more than enough to hold a sizable payload in place in the weak gravity of a small asteroid (assuming this device grabs onto bedrock and not fine gained regolith).

[Gas-Bag]

10:14 PM on 05/21/2012

I would like to see what happens when that core drill bit gets hung up on something and the apparatus starts spinning instead of the bit, it better have a quick clutch.

[-swift]

11:42 AM on 05/22/2012

A bigger problem is that it only drills half an inch diameter hole! How is Bruce Willis supposed to get a nuke in that?

[affejung]

03:15 PM on 05/26/2012

Those who don't understand SI would be just as lost if all the units were dumbed down to dinosaur units. There is no need for the author to change numbers for the sake of an extreme minority when the units used in the research are perfectly understandable to the majority of the world. If most of the people of the US don't understand SI, that is their problem. Let them learn it and understand it like everyone else does.

Science and technology is increasingly being developed by metric users and those that refuse to learn and understand metric, the language of progress, are only going to assure their falling behind.

[MetricCook]

01:43 PM on 05/27/2012

I agree, in fact US schools should only teach with Metric units only, from today on. If US employers need their workers to use and know antiquated Imperial units, let the employers teach the workforce, stop wasting public school time and money teaching Two System!