A 3-legged robotic might sooner or later be hopping throughout the floor of asteroids, looking for priceless minerals. Often known as the SpaceHopper, the bot was not too long ago put to the check on a micro-gravity plane flight.

The SpaceHopper program was first launched two and a half years in the past, as a pupil analysis mission at ETH Zurich college in Switzerland.

It is aimed toward addressing the problem of effectively exploring low-gravity celestial our bodies comparable to asteroids and moons. Not solely may such our bodies include much-needed substances like rare-earth metals, they might additionally assist scientists higher perceive the formation of the universe.

In its present kind, the SpaceHopper robotic consists of a triangular aerospace-aluminum physique with an articulated leg at every nook. Every of these three legs in flip has a knee and a hip joint – two motors transfer the hip through a differential drive mechanism, and one other motor strikes the knee.

ETH Zurich

Onboard deep-learning-based software program controls the mixed actions of the legs, permitting the robotic to carry out a sequence of particular features. These features embrace initiating hops, holding the bot’s physique appropriately oriented whereas in flight, and performing managed landings at predetermined areas.

All 9 leg motors work collectively to launch the SpaceHopper excessive off the asteroid’s floor when leaping. Because the robotic is subsequently in flight, it maintains its upright orientation by selectively extending or withdrawing its legs to shift its middle of mass as wanted. Upon touchdown, its legs flex to soak up influence and to maintain the bot from falling over.

Preliminary exams of those features have been carried out in an ETH Zurich lab, the place the robotic was connected to a counterweight and a spinning gimbal to simulate the low-gravity situations of the dwarf planet Ceres.

Late final yr, nevertheless, members of the coed group received to take the SpaceHopper on a Zero-G parabolic flight hosted by the European House Company and French firm Novespace. In these sorts of flights, an Airbus A310 airliner flies in a sequence of upward and downward arcs, producing quick intervals of microgravity throughout the airplane because it does so.

ETH Zurich

In the course of the 2023 flight, the robotic efficiently jumped off the ground of the plane – in a given route – then stored itself appropriately oriented as soon as airborne. Highlights of the exams could be seen within the video beneath.

It ought to be famous that an ETH Zurich group beforehand developed a 4-legged asteroid-hopping robotic referred to as the SpaceBok. The SpaceHopper’s three-legged structure is meant to scale back measurement and weight as in comparison with that design. In truth, at a complete weight of 5.2 kg (11.5 lb), the robotic might conceivably be carried in and deployed from a small unmanned CubeSat spacecraft.

Sources: ETH Zurich, SpaceHopper