Astronauts train aboard NASA’s famous parabolic flights before leaving Earth’s gravity for days, weeks, or even months at a time. During a strenuous ride on a modified airliner, trainees experience a series of stomach-churning abdominal pains as the aircraft’s rapid up-and-down movements create a zero-gravity environment. But these days, robots may be able to receive the same education as humans and embark on journeys into space.
A few years ago, eight students at ETH Zurich in Switzerland… space hopper. Specially designed to deal with low-gravity environments like asteroids, this little three-legged bot is (you guessed it) jump over one’s surroundings. SpaceHopper uses a neural network trained in deep reinforcement learning simulation to jump, coast using the asteroid’s low gravity, and then orient itself in the air before safely landing on the ground. Built to last and be stable. From there, repeat the process to efficiently travel long distances.
But designing a machine that works theoretically in a computer simulation is one thing, building and testing it in the real world is another.
Sending SpaceHopper to the nearest asteroid is not a cost-effective or easy way to conduct a test run. But thanks to the European Space Agency, novel spacea company specializing in zero-gravity airplane rides, Robots can try out their own movements The next best thing.
During a recent 30-minute parabolic flight, the researchers had SpaceHopper perform more than 30 zero-gravity simulations, each lasting 20 to 25 seconds, inside the small enclosure of Novespace’s Airbus A310. In one experiment, after the plane became weightless, a handler released the robot into the air and watched it return to a particular orientation using only leg movements. In the second test, the team programmed SpaceHopper to jump off the ground and turn around before lightly colliding with a nearby safety net.
Parabolic flight creates a completely weightless environment, so SpaceHopper actually debuted in an environment with lower gravity than a hypothetical asteroid. Because of this, the robot was not able to “land” as it would in microgravity conditions, but demonstrating the ability to orient and adjust in real time was still a major step forward for the researchers.
[Related: NASA’s OSIRIS mission delivered asteroid samples to Earth.]
“Until that moment, we had no idea how well this would work and what the robot would actually do,” SpaceHopper team member Fabio Buehler said at ETH Zurich. recent highlight videos. “That’s why we were so excited when we saw it work. It took a huge weight off our shoulders.”
SpaceHopper’s creators say their bouncing robots could one day be deployed on asteroids to give astronomers new insights into the history of the universe and provide information about the earliest eras of our solar system. That’s what I think. In addition, many asteroids are rich in valuable rare earth metals, a resource that could provide significant benefits to many domestic industries.
