The EELS snake robot

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they are developing a versatile robot capable of gliding over terrain hitherto inaccessible to ordinary rovers and thoroughly inspecting and mapping it, all fully autonomously, without human intervention on the ground. real time.

The creators of this self-propelled autonomous robot, called EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor), designed it with plans to search for signs of life in the ocean beneath the icy crust of the moon Enceladus in mind. Saturn. To explore this sea, the robot to which the mission is entrusted must descend through narrow vents located on the surface and from which geysers sprout and reach into space.

Although tests and development continue, the robot has already proven to be highly adaptable, to the point that it can be used to explore very different terrains, on stars such as the Moon and also on Earth. Some of these types of terrain are sand flats, ice fields, cliff faces, craters too steep for robotic rovers, subterranean lava tubes, and labyrinthine spaces within glaciers.

“It has the ability to go places other robots can’t go. While some robots are better at one particular type of terrain or another, the idea with the EELS is the ability to explore all of them,” explains Matthew Robinson of the Propulsion Laboratory. a Chorro (JPL) and a member of the EELS research and development team.

The team began building the first prototype in 2019 and has been making continuous design modifications. Since last year, these robotics have been conducting monthly field tests and refining both the hardware and software that allow the EELS to operate autonomously. In its current form, dubbed EELS 1.0, the robot weighs about 100 kilograms and is 4 meters long. It is made up of 10 identical segments with a relief comparable to that of a screw and the ability to rotate, giving it traction and grip.

The robot has been put to the test on sand, snow and ice surfaces.

The EELS robot being tested by members of the research and development team in a snowy field. (Photo: NASA JPL/Caltech)

Because of the length of time it takes for any message to travel the distance between Earth and a location in deep space, the EELS is designed not to rely on decisions made on Earth. It is capable of doing everything on its own: assessing its surroundings, calculating the risks of each possible route, deciding the route to take and collecting data on the objectives of interest. The EELS is designed to take care of itself if something goes wrong, without relying on human help.

EELS creates a three-dimensional map of its surroundings using four pairs of stereoscopic cameras and lidar, a device similar to radar but using short laser pulses instead of radio waves. Using the data from these sensors, the navigation algorithms calculate the safest route.

In its final form, the robot will have 48 actuators (small motors) that will give it the flexibility to adopt multiple configurations. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)