NASA Mars Robot LEMUR Trains To Climb Cliffs In Death Valley

Certain limitations prevent NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover from providing scientists with key information about the Red Planet. The car-sized robot, for instance, cannot climb walls or scale the polar caps on planet Mars.

These limitations that hamper scientific investigations on terrestrial words could soon be addressed as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working on developing climbing robots capable of exploring hard to reach points on alien worlds.

Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot (LEMUR) was designed primarily to do repairs on the International Space Station, but engineers continue to test the robot and in the process learn from the experience to develop exploration robots that could be sent for future missions on extraterrestrial worlds.

Early this year, LEMUR managed to make it up steep walls during a test conducted in Death Valley, California. The robot scaled a cliff using fish hooks embedded in each of its fingers. The robot’s AI also chose its own route.

The robot also searched for ancient fossils to simulate searching for alien life. Its science instruments scanned the rock for ancient fossils.

LEMUR made it up climbing to its goal and find fossilized balls of algae that inhabited the ancient sea that was once in the area. These fossils are about 500 million years old, which proves the robot’s ability to detect signs of previous life, a crucial capability for machines built to explore other planets.

The LEMUR project itself is already over but it has inspired and helped in the development of other climbing robot initiatives.

“It helped lead to a new generation of walking, climbing and crawling robots,” NASA said.

“In future missions to Mars or icy moons, robots with AI and climbing technology derived from LEMUR could aid in the search for similar signs of life. Those robots are being developed now, honing technology that may one day be part of future missions to distant worlds.”

JPL's Ice Worm, designed to climb ice walls in frozen worlds such as the Saturn moon Enceladus, was adapted from a limb of the LEMUR robot. The RoboSimian, originally built as a disaster relief robot, has four limbs like LEMUR, and the Underwater Gripper, built for underwater exploration, has one of LEMUR's limbs with the same fishhook-powered grippy fingers.