The snake robot design, which has been around for decades, offers a unique blend of diversity and practicality in the automation landscape. Its key features include redundancy, ensuring operational continuity even if a module gets damaged, and a flexible body capable of navigating through narrow spaces.
This design has proven invaluable for search-and-rescue operations, enabling these robots to reach areas inaccessible to humans and conventional robots. Beyond these applications, snake robots have been utilized in plumbing and medical fields, with miniaturized versions designed to manoeuvre through pipes and around human organs.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been at the forefront of exploring the potential of this robust design for extraterrestrial exploration, particularly in the search for alien life.
Currently, this exploration is in its nascent stages, with simulations being conducted in environments on Earth that replicate potential extraterrestrial terrains. A significant focus has been on icy landscapes, in anticipation of missions to cold celestial bodies like Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Discoveries by the Cassini spacecraft have highlighted Enceladus as a water-rich environment, covered in ice, and a possible host for extraterrestrial life.
The innovative snake robot, named the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), is being developed to probe the oceans beneath Enceladus’ icy crust, aiming to address some of the most profound questions about life beyond Earth.
“It is designed to be adaptable to traverse ocean world–inspired terrain, fluidized media, enclosed labyrinthian environments, and liquids,” mention the researchers in a recent Science Robotics article. This robot’s design, hardware, and software are specifically optimized for the challenges of Enceladus, using Earth’s glaciers as analogues for the icy moon’s environment.
The development of EELS is a collaborative effort involving Arizona State University, the University of California, San Diego, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), with the latter having a storied history in snake robot innovation. CMU’s spinoff, HEBI Robotics, has been instrumental in designing the modules for this pioneering version of the robot.
CMU highlights the robot’s potential to navigate Enceladus’ unique geysers and its deep global ocean, which is believed to be around six miles deep at the south pole. Equipped with advanced capabilities like risk-aware planning, situational awareness, and autonomous motion planning, EELS is designed to operate independently in the remote and harsh conditions far from Earth.
The system, with a weight of 100,000 grams and a length of 4.4 meters, represents a significant leap forward in the exploration of life in our solar system and beyond.
