June 08, 2006
Antarctic Icebox Roving Robot
Here is an article about some heavy duty off-road robots that are solar powered and made to traverse 500 Km of antarctic ice in two weeks. They are not particularly fast, but they are robust.
Posted by elkaim at June 8, 2006 09:41 AM
The next generation of Antarctic explorers could be robots capable of driving hundreds of kilometres and doing scientific experiments alone.
That was the vision unveiled by US scientists and engineers at a major science meeting in Vienna.
They have built a solar-powered prototype and tested it in Greenland, where it has "exceeded expectations".
Subject to funding, they envisage building and deploying a fleet of five robots by the end of next year.
These could perform scientific experiments where access is currently difficult or expensive.
"There are two basic types of mission scenarios," said James Lever, an engineer from the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire.
"One would be to stop the robot en route and take the data you need - things like sampling for bacteria in the snow, measuring the atmosphere, or doing a glaciological survey with ground-penetrating radar," he told the BBC News website at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting.
"Then the other side is array-based sensor networks where you would deploy the instruments and then pick them up some time later."
The prototype, built with grant money from the US National Science Foundation, is about one cubic metre in size.
It weighs about 60kg but can carry a payload of at least 70kg and tow a much heavier load behind on a sledge.
The aim was to build a vehicle capable of travelling 500km in two weeks during the Antarctic summer; but on the evidence of the Greenland tests, the researchers believe they have exceeded their goal.
The box is covered in solar panels. The floor houses the control and drive systems, and four ordinary all-terrain tyres make contact with the snow.