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Insect Robots Scouting Mars New Forms of Terrain Recognition
Insect Robots Scouting Mars In a very interesting article over on Space.com (Wings Over Mars: Flapping Robotic Insects Could Extend Range of Rover Missions) you can find out more about NASA's newest ideas for terrain recognition on mars. The concept is to use small insect like flying robots to scout ahead of the surface-rover, allowing interesting parts of the landscape to be quickly picked out. The new concept here is the flapping wings, which allow the body of the robot to be relatively stable, and move in a very flexible fashion - unlike airplanes for example. The flapping of the wings is done by an artificial muscle, which is going to be patented... so don't expect too many details! The Entomopter video is really cool to watch, and gets the idea across extremely well indeed. There's also a thread on the topic over at Slashdot - http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/05/1624238 | Alex J. Champandard 934 posts. Wednesday 12 December, 05:43 Reply
Biomimetics ... or "the development of machines that imitate birds or flying insects". Another article about the NASA project: Science Daily - A Robotic Bug's Life: To Study Mars | Alex J. Champandard 934 posts. Thursday 10 January, 12:01 Reply