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Version 1.0 of the EELS robotic throughout discipline testing in Alberta, Canada, in September 2023. | Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In a collaboration that was 17 years within the making, Carnegie Mellon University, or CMU, researchers labored with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create an autonomous snake-like robotic. The Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, or EELS, is a self-propelled robotic. NASA scientists mentioned they hope to make use of EELS to seek for indicators of life within the ocean beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s Enceladus moon.
EELS was developed at NASA’s JPL with collaboration from Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State University, and the University of California, San Diego. Howie Choset, CMU’s Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science within the School of Computer Science, Matt Travers, a senior techniques scientist on the faculty’s Robotics Institute (RI), and Andrew Orekhov, a mission scientist within the RI, contributed to the mission.
The ensuing robotic can navigate excessive terrains, together with ice, sand, rocks, cliff partitions, deep craters, underground lava tubes, and glaciers. The CMU staff developed the controllers for the robotic. In addition, an early prototype used modules developed by HEBI Robotics, a college spinout that Choset based in 2014.
“Enceladus is essentially covered with water,” Choset informed The Robot Report. “But it’s underneath the rock that forms the moon. In the South Pole, the rock and ice are about 2 km [1.2 mi.] thick, and there are geysers that spit the water out from the underground ocean into space. So, there’s a belief that if you fly a spacecraft to Enceladus, land, and then get into the geysers, you may be able to swim in this extraterrestrial ocean.”
EELS snake robotic constructed for area purposes
“So, we’ve been working on snake robots for a very long time,” Choset mentioned. “And what’s nice about snake robots in general, is they can use their many joints and their slender physique to thread through tightly packed volumes and get to locations that people in machinery otherwise can’t access.”
This makes snake robots good for a lot of purposes, together with search and rescue, he mentioned. In this case, EELS will use these capabilities to wriggle into cracks in Enceladus’ layer of ice. EELS stands out from different snake robots due to its “wheels.” These wheels look extra like corkscrews than conventional wheels, mentioned Choset.
“When those corkscrews rotate, they kind of penetrate the ice a little bit, but also gives the mechanism the ability to roll forward,” he defined. “So the robot has the ability to propel itself, not only with the snake-like motion but also these corkscrew wheels that allow it to traverse icy surfaces really quickly.”
Choset mentioned these wheels will assist the robotic to higher transfer throughout ice till it might discover a crack or geyser gap to crawl into.
“The autonomy that we developed is the robot’s ability to get into a tight space, and then use the constraints of that tight space to propel itself forward,” he mentioned.
But that’s solely half of the battle. Once the EELS robotic has discovered its approach into considered one of these holes, it has to have the ability to swim by means of Enceladus’ ocean to seek for potential indicators of life. Choset’s staff already had expertise constructing swimming snake robots.
“We built a variety of snake robots, but the one we most recently built was a swimming one called HUMRS, which stands for ‘Hardened Underwater Modular Robot Snake,’” Choset mentioned. The CMU staff was capable of apply what it realized whereas creating HUMRS to this mission with NASA JPL.
Connections convey the correct folks on board
Choset’s long-held connections inside the trade introduced him onto the EELS mission, alongside along with his experience in designing snake-like robots.
“I went to Caltech as a graduate student, and JPL was part of Caltech,” he mentioned. “So, whenever there’s an opportunity to work with JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, I jump on it, because it reminds me of my young graduate student days.”
It wasn’t simply the prospect to work with JPL that introduced Choset on board, nonetheless. He was recruited by Rohan Thakkar, a researcher who labored in Choset’s group 17 years in the past as a highschool pupil.
“I think it’s important for people to realize that it’s not just a bunch of engineers getting together to build some mechanism as if they’re reading from a recipe or a cookbook,” Choset mentioned. “Engineering is very important, but I want people to recognize the engineers behind the engineering.”
Choset mentioned that non-public connections, just like the one between him and his CMU college students, are what retains the trade working.
Editor’s notice: HEBI Robots will exhibit at Booth 448-12 on the Robotics Summit & Expo, which will probably be on May 1 and a couple of on the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Registration is now open.
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