Scientific exploration of challenging planetary analog environments with a team of legged robots

Arm, Philip; Waibel, Gabriel; Preisig, Jan; Tuna, Turcan; Zhou, Ruyi; Bickel, Valentin; Ligeza, Gabriela; Miki, Takahiro; Kehl, Florian; Kolvenbach, Hendrik; Hutter, Marco

doi:10.1126/scirobotics.ade9548

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Arm, P., Waibel, G., Preisig, J., Tuna, T., Zhou, R., Bickel, V., Ligeza, G., Miki, T., Kehl, F., Kolvenbach, H., & Hutter, M. (2023). Scientific exploration of challenging planetary analog environments with a team of legged robots. Science Robotics, 8(80), eade9548. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.ade9548

Abstract

The interest in exploring planetary bodies for scientific investigation and in situ resource utilization is ever-rising. Yet, many sites of interest are inaccessible to state-of-the-art planetary exploration robots because of the robots’ inability to traverse steep slopes, unstructured terrain, and loose soil. In addition, current single-robot approaches only allow a limited exploration speed and a single set of skills. Here, we present a team of legged robots with complementary skills for exploration missions in challenging planetary