Servo - July 2009

SOIL BURIES ROVER

Last time the Spirit rover was in danger on Mars, it was NASA’s fault. This time, however, it’s something even worse than an inefficient, overburdened, and underfunded bureaucracy: loose soil. With only five functional wheels, Spirit has sunk up to its axles, and will likely not move for weeks as engineers try to decide what to do. Having operated on Mars for 1,800 days (Martian days), Spirit has outlived its original mission plan by a factor of twenty. It certainly deserves a more dramatic end than getting stuck in the mud.

"Spirit is in a very difficult situation. We are proceeding methodically and cautiously," JPL's John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin rover,

Opportunity, commented.

According to NASA, a team of engineers and scientists have temporarily suspended driving Spirit while assessing ways to free the rover. They are planning simulation tests using a test rover.

"It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again. Meanwhile, we are using Spirit's scientific instruments to learn more about the physical properties of the soil that is giving us trouble," Callas said.

Five wheels that are still functioning on the six-wheel rover are sunk about halfway into the ground, rendering Spirit immobile. The sixth wheel actually stopped working about three years ago.

IN THE HOPPER ...

When Boston Dynamics ( http://bostondynamics.com) updated their website a while back, there was a blurb about some kind of hopping robot that they were working on.

Apparently, the robot’s primary method of movement is a set of four wheels. If it encounters an obstacle, the robot deploys a piston that can launch it up to 25 feet in the air, 30 times over. The hop height is controllable even if the robot is launching itself from different types of surfaces, and Boston Dynamics is working on ways to keep the robot stabilized while “in flight” to limit tumbling when it hits the ground. Funded by DARPA, the delivery date for the hopper is sometime in 2010. It will be used primarily for surveillance, but DARPA wants the option to mount weapons on it, too. (Big surprise there.)

GREETINGS FROM iDROIDOPIA

Artificial Life, Inc. ( www.artificial-life.com) has this really cool game for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms. It’s called iDroids and it’s a high quality, fun to play side scrolling game in which players are introduced to the fantasy world of little robots living in iDroidOpia and HAXX — an iDroid and rural robot farmer from iDroidAbama. The iDroids' adventure begins when HAXX's entire family is abducted and he has to follow the trail of his kidnapped wife and children while fighting, swinging, and fueling through Socket City, where peril is behind every turn! For more details about iDroids, go to www.botme.com. There’s a lite version of the game available for FREE download at http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore. woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=314790220&mt = 8.

SCRAMBLED

LEGS

In other Boston Dynamics news, their latest climber (developed in partnership with UPenn) trades six legs for four legs and, thanks to some new brushless motors mounted on a new type of leg, can scramble up vertical surfaces at close to a foot per second.

It does a kind of scramble instead of a climb and only supports its entire weight on two limbs for brief periods. They’re trying to get the robot optimized to run along the ground, too. The benefits here are obvious: legged, clawed robots would have the ability to move rapidly over uneven surfaces, scale walls and buildings, and basically be able to track you down and spy on you anywhere.