PORTLAND, Oregon — Around 6,000 feet up Mount Hood, a team of engineers and scientists are teaching a dog-like robot how to walk across the mountain's terrain. The robot, named Spirit, uses its four metal legs to traverse the rocky paths and melting snow.
The team intends to use data from its tests with Spirit on Mount Hood to develop future robots that may be able to explore the moon, and perhaps Mars, in the future.
"What we realized, pretty early on, is that a legged robot has the ability to interact with soil in ways that wheels cannot," said Douglas Jerolmack in a news release. "This interaction isn’t just about mobility; it’s about questioning and understanding the environment it moves through, in real time."
Jerolmack is part of the Legged Autonomous Surface Science in Analog Environments Project, also known as the LASSIE Project. The NASA-funded, collaborative effort consists of engineers and scientists from a number of universities including Oregon State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Pennsylvania and Texas A&M University.
During the summer of 2023, the team spent five days with Spirit on Mount Hood, testing its ability to move through the diverse, lunar-like landscape.
"The initial idea was to use these legged robots to carry scientific instruments into hazardous or difficult-to-reach areas or places too dangerous to send research assistants and graduate students," Jerolmack said. "But it quickly snowballed from there once we saw the potential in having a robot learn information about the physics of its environment and how it operates in it."
"Very little of the moon’s surface has actually been explored, so it makes sense to have robot teams that can both sense and adapt to unexplored terrain," said Cynthia Sung, an expert in robot design.
The team foresees Spirit working with other robots, like a wheeled rover that can navigate long distances or a "hexapedal robot" that has even better mobility.
"This project is the proving ground that we can enable new science and new mobility on environments that are like other planets," said Ryan Ewing, a geologist from NASA Johnson Space Center.
The team has also taken the robot to the beaches in southern California, the grassy hills of San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and to White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The LASSIE Project will take Spirit on two more test trips, one back to White Sands and the other back to Mount Hood.
