Year: 2022

The ouroboros—the ancient symbol of a snake swallowing its own tail—generally represents infinity and the natural, endless cycles of the universe.

By Northeastern University 

But for members of Northeastern’s Students for the Exploration and Development of Space club, the ouroboros-like design of their moon-destined robot is merely practical—the robot can slither like a desert snake across the loose soil of the moon and, when needed, connect head-to-tail to form a wheel that can tumble down the steep slopes of the moon’s craters.

Any metaphors for the unity of the solar system or the orbit of the moon around the Earth are happy coincidences.

The student-led team of 13 undergraduates recently won an award from NASA’s BIG Idea Challenge to further develop its design, which fulfilled this year’s competition requirements for robots that can traverse extreme terrains, such as the enormous craters on the moon’s south pole.

“We want to explore the Shackleton crater, which is massive—20 kilometers in diameter—because it might contain water,” says Matt Schroeter, the undergraduate bioengineering student who is leading the team.

“But if you want to send a robot into that crater, it needs to be really energy efficient because there’s no sunlight, no potential for solar energy.”

The tumbling-wheel design allows gravity to do most of the work on the way down to the base of the crater, saving most of the robot’s energy for the journey back. Once the robot is on level ground, it can unwind itself and resume slithering through the soil in search of water.

Continue reading… “This snake-like robot will search for water on the moon”

KAWASAKI BEX: RIDEABLE GOAT FROM INTERNATIONAL ROBOT EXHIBITION

By Isaiah Richard

Kawasaki made a rideable electric goat, and the company released this for the world to see via the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. Instead of a bipedal human that resembles the method of humans by standing on their two feet, it stands on all fours. Unlike humans, the new Kawasaki Bex robot is a quadruped device that owners can modify to anything fully modular. 

According to an online video posted via YouTube by Kazumichi Maruyama, Kawasaki’s take on the IREX 2022 event in Tokyo is to bring a rideable goat as its latest innovation for mobile machines. The device resembles the Ibex, a wild goat usually found in mountainous regions of East Africa, North Africa, and Eurasia.

Kawasaki named this the “Bex” and is a quadruped robot that walks on all four legs and has been a long-term project from the company since 2015. The Bex came from the Kaleido Program. Its focus is to give the world a robot that can perform multiple tasks by carrying the load and transporting it, even for mountainous regions.

Continue reading… “Kawasaki Bex: All-Electric Rideable Goat Robot That Can Carry 220 lbs. of Cargo, Fully Modular”

As global demand soars, extractive industries are embracing automation.

Written by Greg Nichols

A mining outfit in Australia is making a big bet on big robots. Following a recent proof of concept at a gold mine, mining contractor MACA will retrofit a fleet of 100 very large vehicles to create one of the largest autonomous heavy equipment fleets in the world.

This is a pretty significant rollout and a proverbial canary in the gold mine for the sector’s broader automation ambitions. With the world hungrier than ever for precious and rare earth metals, technology is increasingly called on to make mining operations more efficient and cost-effective while unlocking increasingly scarce resources.

Powering the new rollout is autonomous heavy equipment company SafeAI and its Australian partner, Position Partners. This new generation of autonomous heavy vehicle technology is a major upgrade from the first generation retrofits, which had limited onboard processing power and took a long time to see ROI in most cases. Early versions of autonomous vehicle technology in the sector also operated with closed legacy systems, preventing mixed fleets from communicating. Industries like mining have had this tech for 20 years now, but the lack of accessibility means it hasn’t really taken off yet.

Autonomy 2.0 is changing that. AI-powered and armed with multimodal sensors (lidar, radar, camera), these new systems have significant onboard processing power to reduce network reliance and enable fast decisions. It’s also open, interoperable, and vehicle-agnostic — meaning tech like SafeAI’s retrofit autonomy can be applied to any vehicle, at pretty much any age from any manufacturer.

Continue reading… “Giant 180-ton robot trucks are mining gold”