Technology has given us new opportunities to explore space, especially with robots which have turned out to be particularly effective tools for exploring other planets.
Barring the imminent return to the Moon, the closest human space goal is the exploration of Mars. Exciting adventure, which could reveal resource traces, or of extraterrestrial life past or present: what if we faced it with a robotic lizard?
On all fours on the red planet
Scientists of the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics they made a four-legged lizard-inspired robot that could be useful for exploring Mars.
This robot, described in the magazine Biomimetics of MDPI (I'll link the study here), has a flexible structure that mimics the movements and walking style of desert lizards.
In the paper, the researchers Guangming Chen, Long Qiao, Zhenwen Zhou, Lutz Richter e Aihong Ji write that by virtue of its terrain composition (made up of granular soils and rocks of different sizes), Mars could be prohibitively expensive for today's heavy rovers. For a crawling four-legged robot inspired by the locomotion of lizards, on the other hand, it would be a completely different story. Blessed the biomimetics, always.
How is the "space lizard" made?
The biomimetic robot designed by Chen and his team consists of a structure similar to a flexible spine and four legs. To emulate the lizard's "crawling" motion, each leg has two hinges and a gear that generates an oscillation.
The hip joints that join the vertebral structure to the robot's legs consist of two servo motors and a four-point mechanism that allows the robot to stand up while maintaining balance. The "legs" of the robot have four flexible "fingers".
'Kinematic models of the feet, legs and spine, as well as the coordination between the spine and legs are established to determine the robot's movements,' it says.
The next steps
At first, the researchers first simulated, then observed (with a prototype 3D printed) how their robot worked to see if it could mimic the lizard's movements. Even on terrains that "imitate" Martian roughness. The results? Very encouraging: movements and walking pattern have been perfectly reproduced.
Yes, the robot can move effectively in rocky environments, it has potential for future missions to Mars. Now improvements will be needed: a protective structure against dust, stronger materials, more refined algorithms, a continuous power supply system.
The rest is, indeed, will be history: I can already see this lizard "scampering" on TVs all over the world.
