Colony of flat robots as assistants to exploitation of Moon for interplanetary satellites control and maintenance
- Paper number
IAC-08.B4.8.7
- Author
Prof. Alberto ROVETTA, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Year
2008
- Abstract
This paper deals with the efficiency of a colony of robots on the Moon surface, able to sustain a continuous communication with Earth and Moon, checking the performances of satellites on orbiting around Earth and Moon. The mobility of the robots is guaranteed by the locomotion structure, as a spider with legs and also with wheels, with a metamorphic structure. The adaptability of the structure of the robots is confirmed by many aspects: - the robots can change the width and the height, because of an articulated structure with 3 degrees of freedom for every leg; - the wheels are hidden under the legs and intervene on smooth terrains, permitting an higher speed than with legs; - the solar cells are recharged easily because the shape of the robot surfaces; - the robots can join together and form a larger structure; the robots contain gigatel components, able to receive and send high density of communication data. The robots are movable on the Moon surface and can change their position in order to prepare the most reliable network. Nano antennas and nanosensors are embedded in the robots bodies, and the size of the movable system is obtained very small and light. During the launch and the landing, the colony of robots is flat, because legs and body are flattened with an original mechanical design. The robots are lodged inside the body of the main rover, and go out at landing. The intelligent control is made by two different levels of intelligent functions, which work in autonomous way and in a telecontrolled operative way, under the human supervisory control. After many learning activities, the colony of robots can gain its own autonomy. Legs have a shape very flexible, and can work as arms, for manipulating operations, with a soft structure of the fingers, which change according to the mass and shape of the grasped object. The colony of robots has already a prototype in Politecnico di Milano. A multihop structure for communication represents the strategic and military power of the system. The colony of robots can also support the experiences of sciences performed on Moon and transmit a great quantity of data to Earth, while the distribution of many robots permits a multiple vision and exam of every aspect. A further new aspect which increases the performances of the colony of robots is the maintenance aspect. All the robots can cooperate, each of them is performing a payload for scientific tests, all of them have inside high power transmission chip. All of them can check the other robots and guarantee the efficiency. In case of necessity, one robot may become a passive robot, which offers its components to support the reparation and the maintenance of the other robots, by sacrificing its mechanical life to the behaviour of the team. The colony of robots is controlled by a software which detects the position of every robot, with nano gyroscopes and nano accelerometers, with force and position sensors on the legs and the wheels, and with the motion controlled by neural networks to avoid collision and interferences. For a future lunar sample return and a future human + robots cooperation, the colony of robots called COROLLA (Colony of Robots with Large Autonomy) represents a first step. The project is new and original.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.B4.8.7.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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