JPL Spider Bots

Posted 19 Dec 2002 at 16:39 UTC by steve

A recent NASA press release has brought attention to a small, multi-legged robot being developed at JPL's Mobility Systems Concept Development section. The tiny robots come with 4, 6, 8 and more legs. The researcher say up to 50 legs may be needed in some applications. Eventually, NASA hopes teams of many autonomous spider bots could chart terrain or Mars or move through crawlways on the International Space Station to make repairs. The development work was done by Robert Hogg and several engineering students.

More of the same, posted 20 Dec 2002 at 07:45 UTC by motters » (Master)

Looks pretty much like a rerun of the MIT genghis and attilla robots from the early 1990s. I think those attilla robots were actually more sophisticated in their range of behaviors and according to Brooks "flesh and machines" they were successfully space tested but rejected by NASA for some tennuous political reason.

- Bob

Reinventing the wheel wastes a lot of money, posted 20 Dec 2002 at 14:43 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

Yup. I think NASA still has too many arrogant PHD type people there. They still seem to hate each other a lot, as exemplified in the spectacular Mars probe failures a while back. I seriously doubt NASA learned anything after the MARS failures. Whoever has the politcal favors of the moment gets the funding.

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