기본 콘텐츠로 건너뛰기

NASA's origami robots can squeeze into places rovers can't

Dylan Taylor
Imagine a Martian rover that can send small robotic minions to crawl into crevices or climb steep slopes -- everywhere a full-sized vehicle can't go to. That's the scenario a team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory hopes to achieve by developing small origami-inspired robots called Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robots or PUFFERs. They're made of printed circuit boards and can be flattened and stacked on top of each other on the way to their mission. Once they get to the location, they can pop back up and drive away.
PUFFER's project manager Jaakko Karras conjured up its design back when he was experimenting with origami while working on robots at UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystem Lab. The team replaced the paper he used in his design with printed circuit boards and then 3D printed wheels for the machine. PUFFER's latest set of wheels have treads and can inch forward one wheel at a time, so it can climb slopes. They can also fold over the robot's body if it needs to squeeze into a tiny opening.

While the current prototype can already drive up to 2,050 feet on one charge and withstand extremely high temperatures, the team has more plans for the machine. They want to equip it with scientific instruments, which could make it as big as a breadbox. In addition, if it's to explore Mars and other celestial bodies, it has to be autonomous and not a machine controlled remotely via Bluetooth.

댓글

이 블로그의 인기 게시물

MS, 인텔 N200 CPU 탑재 '서피스 고 4' 발표.. 가격 76만원부터

iOS 17.4.1 마이너 업데이트, 이르면 이번주 출시되나

DLSS3를 FSR3로 바꿔주는 MOD 등장, RTX 20/30 시리즈에 DLSS + FSR3 조합 실현