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Going Back To Those Faraway Places . . .

What If We Landed 10,000 Robot Insects On A Planet?

NASA JPL image of robot work crew transporting cargo
Michael Goldfarb examines a model of the robot bug that his team developed in this Vanderbilt University photo by Neil Brake
What if we dropped 10,000 electronic-mechanical bugs on a distant planet and sent them marching off in all directions for a look around? Each insect would require only a tiny amount of power and would have only one sensor, but the risk of loss would be distributed across the 10,000 robots. If we lost one -- if it broke down, ran out of power or got trapped -- the mission wouldn't be in jeopardy.

Sound like another cool idea for exploring the Solar System? Well, two mechanical engineering profesors at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, are developing just such robot bugs that someday could help us explore other planets.

Ephrahim Garcia and Michael Golfarb are using a $904,000 Pentagon contract to devise tiny mobile machines with sensors and cameras to relay information back to Earth. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-- which, by the way, developed the technology that created the Internet back around 1970 -- now has awarded the Vanderbilt professors a three-year contract. Garcia and Golfarb are building the first prototype insect in 1998.

The bugs will be small metallic creatures with four to six legs. They'll be around two inches long, about the size of a large beetle. The robot crawling insects will be made of titanium or steel and will be powered by battery.

Batteries Included:

Because battery power will be limited, the electronics and mechanics must be efficient if the bugs are to be useful. Piezoelectric ceramics technology is expected to provide maximum battery energy. A thin, ceramic-coated metal plate will be on top of the bug's skeleton. Voltage from the battery will be applied to that plate. The plate bends when electricity is supplied and snaps back to original form when the voltage stops. The motion of the plate will make the bug's legs move. That's the same technology used to make a pager vibrate.

Just attaching an ordinary battery wouldn't work because the energy would be drained by the time the robot crawled 100 yards. The novel system uses very little power, however the speed can't be controlled.

There is a problem. The ceramic plate restricts motion. The skeleton has a large stride. If the stride is only a quarter of a millimeter, the insect can't travel far. A stride of one to two millimeters would be good, while more than two would be even better. If it goes only travels fifty feet in the sand and then dies, it wouldn't be considered practical.

The crawlers should be inexpensive. One prototype will cost $100, but the mass-produced bugs should cost as little as $10, depending on the type of camera or sensor.


Learn more about robotic space missions:
NASA JPL image of robot work crew transporting cargo
Robot work crew transporting cargo
NASA JPL photo