![]() Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) staged the first part of a competition in which roboticists from around the world submitting machines capable of completing autonomous missions underground. Already on Earth we have robots that are used in everything from mapping to building houses, often involving high levels of autonomy. The billion - or, heck, even trillion - dollar question is: But will it happen? In my view, the answer is an inevitable “yes,” although it remains to be seen whether OffWorld will be the company to carry it out. Those could range from excavating ore or laying surfaces to moving building materials. However, while they all feature a similar base design, the robots are also intended to be modular, so that special tools such as special gripper arms can be affixed to carry out different tasks. ![]() ![]() It has already landed support from undisclosed Fortune 500 companies to use its technology for more terrestrial applications such as mining. Care has been paid to making sure they will be able to operate in a variety of non-Earth environments, including the moon, Mars and even the surface of asteroids without requiring a major redesign. They are designed to be small and robust enough to neatly pack into and survive launches on rockets. OffWorld’s robots measure around two feet in length, weigh around 53 kilos, and boast a power capacity of around 13.5 kWh. This common architecture consists of a six-wheeled design not dissimilar to the delivery robots built by Starship Technologies. “In the same way, our robots are based around a common architecture.” He likens them, conceptually rather than visually, to creatures such as ants, which work together to achieve remarkable results as colonies. “An ant has very simple intelligence with a very limited set of neurons and, for the most part, non-specialized set of capabilities,” he said. Keravala refers to OffWorld’s robots as different “species” of robot. “We’re now entering an era when new forms of robotics can undertake all of these basic infrastructure jobs.” OffWorld “What we need to push out into these harsh conditions is a new form of industrial work force that can undertake these tough jobs in space before we send humans out ,” he said. (Heck, maybe they’ll even throw us a banging welcome party when we arrive!) Keravala listed the types of tasks the company is building robots to carry out as including harvesting water ice for drinking or to make rocket fuel, building underground and surface-based “safe cabins” for colonists, establishing power plants, and paving surfaces. Powered by on-board solar panels and relying on machine learning for smarts, the company’s robots promise to carry out the heavy lifting needed to get space ready for humans. ![]() NASA calls off second try at moon rocket launchpad test Hubble and Spitzer spot two far-off watery worldsįleet of tiny robots could one day explore subsurface oceans on icy worlds ![]()
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