New legged robots designed to explore planets as a team (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 years ago by very_well_lost@lemmy.world to c/space@lemmy.world

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While rovers have made incredible discoveries, their wheels can hold them back, and erratic terrain can mean damage. There is no replacing something like Perseverance, but sometimes rovers could use a leg up, and they could get that from a small swarm of four-legged robots.

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[-] messem10@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

Issue there is how does it handle loose fill material or sand/dust in its joints? That’d wear it down quick or result in it getting into an unrecoverable situation. (Wheeled rovers have a larger contact area and less likely to sink into sand.)

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

According to the article they would be supplemental to the rovers, not as a replacement. So I'd imagine they'd be able to retreat into some sort of storage on the rover where they could hopefully be air cleaned automatically.

this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023

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