More Biomimetic Robots for Mars

Posted 13 Jan 2002 at 04:11 UTC by steve

NASA seems to be coming up with endless types of biomemetic robots for Mars exploration lately (not to mention conventional robots like those in the previous story). The latest news releases describe a tiny, insectiod Entomopter being developed at the University of Missouri and a sort of robo-yabby being researched at the University of Melbourne. Let's just hope they're spending at least some of their money on technology that will get all these robots (and us) to Mars.

What the heck is a yabby???, posted 14 Jan 2002 at 14:09 UTC by josborn » (Journeyer)

Last time I checked, those were crayfish or crawdads!!! :-)

Flying on Mars a hard thing, posted 15 Jan 2002 at 02:20 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

I'm wondering if either entomopter will actually be able to fly on Mars after reading this [http://www.x-plane.com/mars.html] article I found on Slashdot.org.

Flying robot crawdads, posted 15 Jan 2002 at 04:52 UTC by steve » (Master)

Yep, first thing I thought of when I saw the photo was crawdads. Maybe we need to drink a can of Foster's beer and learn to speak Austrailian?

The problem with those flying insect robots in Martian atmosphere was pointed on by someone on comp.robotics.misc the other day too. Seems like it would be a lot easier to build something that floats like a balloon. Or they could just use a few of their dozens of other Mars robots instead. :-)

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