A 3-legged robotic might in the future be hopping throughout the floor of asteroids, trying to find invaluable minerals. Referred to as the SpaceHopper, the bot was just lately put to the check on a zero-gravity plane flight.
The SpaceHopper program was first launched two and a half years in the past, as a pupil analysis venture at ETH Zurich college in Switzerland.
It is aimed toward addressing the problem of effectively exploring low-gravity celestial our bodies reminiscent of asteroids and moons. Not solely would possibly such our bodies comprise much-needed substances like rare-earth metals, they may additionally assist scientists higher perceive the formation of the universe.
In its present kind, the SpaceHopper robotic consists of a triangular aerospace-aluminum physique with an articulated leg at every nook. Every of these three legs in flip has a knee and a hip joint – two motors transfer the hip through a differential drive mechanism, and one other motor strikes the knee.
ETH Zurich/Jorit Geurts
Onboard deep-learning-based software program controls the mixed actions of the legs, permitting the robotic to carry out a sequence of particular features. These features embody initiating hops, preserving the bot’s physique appropriately oriented whereas in flight, and performing managed landings at predetermined areas.
All 9 leg motors work collectively to launch the SpaceHopper excessive off the asteroid’s floor when leaping. Because the robotic is subsequently in flight, it maintains its upright orientation by selectively extending or withdrawing its legs to shift its middle of mass as wanted. Upon touchdown, its legs flex to soak up impression and to maintain the bot from falling over.
Preliminary exams of those features had been carried out in an ETH Zurich lab, the place the robotic was connected to a counterweight and a spinning gimbal to simulate the low-gravity circumstances of the dwarf planet Ceres.
Late final 12 months, nonetheless, members of the coed staff acquired to take the SpaceHopper on an Air Zero G parabolic flight hosted by the European House Company and French firm Novespace. In these sorts of flights, an Airbus A310 airliner flies in a sequence of upward and downward arcs, producing brief intervals of weightlessness throughout the airplane because it does so.
Nicolas Courtioux
In the course of the 2023 flight, the robotic repeatedly jumped off the ground of the plane – in a selected route – and stored itself appropriately oriented as soon as airborne. Highlights of the exams could be seen within the video beneath.
It needs to be famous that an ETH Zurich staff beforehand developed a 4-legged asteroid-hopping robotic referred to as the SpaceBok. The SpaceHopper’s three-legged structure is meant to cut back measurement and weight as in comparison with that design. In actual fact, at a complete weight of 5.2 kg (11.5 lb), the robotic might conceivably be carried in and deployed from a small unmanned CubeSat spacecraft.
Utilizing a hopping robotic for asteroid exploration
Sources: ETH Zurich, SpaceHopper