A versatile robot that would autonomously map, traverse, and explore previously inaccessible destinations is being put to the test at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. How do you create a robot that can go places no one has ever seen before – on its own, without real-time human input? A team at N
. Although testing and development continue, designing for such a challenging destination has resulted in a highly adaptable robot. EELS could pick a safe course through a wide variety of terrain on Earth, the Moon, and far beyond, including undulating sand and ice, cliff walls, craters too steep for rovers, underground lava tubes, and labyrinthine spaces within glaciers.
The project team began building the first prototype in 2019 and has been making continual revisions. Since last year, they’ve been conducting monthly field tests and refining both the hardware and the software that allows EELS to operate autonomously. In its current form, dubbed EELS 1.0, the robot weighs about 220 pounds and is 13 feet long. It’s composed of 10 identical segments that rotate, using screw threads for propulsion, traction, and grip.
JPL’s EELS was conceived of as an autonomous snake robot that would descend narrow vents in the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus to explore the ocean hidden below. But prototypes of have been put to the test to prepare the robot for a variety of environments. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechBecause of the communications lag time between Earth and deep space, EELS is designed to autonomously sense its environment, calculate risk, travel, and gather data with yet-to-be-determined science instruments.
EELS creates a 3D map of its surroundings using four pairs of stereo cameras and lidar, which is similar to radar but employs short laser pulses instead of radio waves. With the data from those sensors, navigation algorithms figure out the safest path forward. The goal has been to create library of “gaits,” or ways the robot can move in response to terrain challenges, from sidewinding to curling in on itself, a move the team calls “banana.
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