Four-Legged, Animal Mimicking Robot With Artificial Intelligence
Researchers at NASA, along with JPL-Caltech have designed a walking, four-legged robot dog that will autonomously navigate the Martian surface and its rough terrain and caves. It is named “Au-Spot”. Unlike Au-Spot, previous rovers were limited mostly to flat surfaces.
This walking Au-Spot “Mars Dog” is equipped with artificial intelligence and visual, thermal, and motion sensors to explore the rough terrain. This will allow it to avoid obstacles, choose the best path, and build virtual maps of buried tunnels and caverns. It can correct itself from multiple falls using recovery algorithms. It is twelve times lighter than current rovers. It reached a normal walking speed of five kmph during tests.
It uses AI (artificial intelligence) to identify objects that may be of scientific interest. It also has a communication module which will transfer data to the surface while it is exploring underground. With all of these new features, Au-Spot will help scientists detect signs of life beyond Earth.
