Future moon missions may employ robot dog, as man’s best friend is already an agile explorer. On Earth, dogs enthusiastically engage in jumping, digging, and exploring elevated terrain.
Now, scientists hope to replicate this agility on the moon as part of the NASA-led Artemis program, which could land astronauts in the late 2020s.
LEAP stands for Legged Exploration of the Aristarchus Plateau; Aristarchus is one of the moon regions that the European Space Agency, or ESA, hopes to explore in the near future.
Patrick Bambach, an engineer at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, said in a statement, “With the robot, we can investigate key features to study the geologic history and evolution of the moon, including the ejecta around craters, fresh impact sites, and collapsed lava tubes, where material may not have been altered by space weathering and other processes.”
The robot dog may ride on ESA’s European Large Logistics Lander (EL3), which is tasked with delivering payloads and experiments to the moon’s surface beginning in the late 2020s. The dog shape was inspired by ANYmal, a four-legged robot made by ETH Zürich and ANYbotics, a company that grew out of ETH Zürich.
Due to ANYmal’s diverse gaits, its ability to flip back up if it falls, and its dexterity at climbing steep slopes, this is lunar exploration as we’ve never imagined it. Any mammal can dig channels in the soil or use its legs to flip over rocks to examine their undersides.
Bambach stated, “Traditional rovers have enabled significant discoveries on the moon and Mars, but they have limitations.” “Wheeled exploration of terrain with loose soil, large boulders, or slopes exceeding 15 degrees is particularly difficult. “Spirit, a Mars rover, had its mission terminated when it became stuck in sand.”
The research is still in its infancy, but the team has thus far deployed the robot in a virtual environment designed to simulate a moon-like surface, including gravity and physical properties. Obviously, the dog was also taken outside for a walk.
Researchers were surprised by the robot’s intelligence in its early tests. On the moon-like surface, where gravity is one-sixth that of Earth, “ANYmal began using a jumping-like mode of locomotion, just as the Apollo astronauts did — realizing that jumping can be more energy efficient than walking,” Bambach explained.
The team anticipates that the finished robot dog will weigh less than 110 pounds (50 kg), with one-fifth of that mass consisting of scientific payloads. AnyMAL will be required to carry equipment ranging from multispectral sensors to spectrometers for determining the composition of nearby rocks. The date of the first flight has not yet been announced.
