A 3-legged robotic might at some point be hopping throughout the floor of asteroids, trying to find helpful minerals. Known because the SpaceHopper, the bot was 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 scholar analysis challenge at ETH Zurich college in Switzerland.
It’s aimed toward addressing the problem of effectively exploring low-gravity celestial our bodies similar to asteroids and moons. Not solely may 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. Each of these three legs in flip has a knee and a hip joint – two motors transfer the hip by way of 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 collection of particular capabilities. These capabilities embrace initiating hops, conserving the bot’s physique accurately oriented whereas in flight, and performing managed landings at predetermined places.
All 9 leg motors work collectively to launch the SpaceHopper excessive off the asteroid’s floor when leaping. As the robotic is subsequently in flight, it maintains its upright orientation by selectively extending or withdrawing its legs to shift its heart of mass as wanted. Upon touchdown, its legs flex to soak up impression and to maintain the bot from falling over.
Initial assessments of those capabilities 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 scholar workforce obtained to take the SpaceHopper on an Air Zero G parabolic flight hosted by the European Space Agency and French firm Novespace. In these sorts of flights, an Airbus A310 airliner flies in a collection of upward and downward arcs, producing brief intervals of weightlessness inside the aircraft because it does so.
Nicolas Courtioux
During the 2023 flight, the robotic repeatedly jumped off the ground of the plane – in a particular route – and stored itself accurately oriented as soon as airborne. Highlights of the assessments may be seen within the video under.
It needs to be famous that an ETH Zurich workforce beforehand developed a 4-legged asteroid-hopping robotic known as the SpaceBok. The SpaceHopper’s three-legged format is meant to cut back dimension and weight as in comparison with that design. In reality, 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.
Using a hopping robotic for asteroid exploration
Sources: ETH Zurich, SpaceHopper