NASA Could Explore Titan With Squishable 'Super Ball Bot' 59
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports on a rover design being developed at NASA Ames Research Center: Super Ball Bot. The premise is that the rover's brain and scientific equipment would be suspended in the center of a structure made of rigid rods and elastic cables. The rods and cables would be deformable, allowing the rover to roll over complex terrain without damage. This design would be ideal for exploring a place like Saturn's moon Titan. Its atmosphere is thick enough that a probe could drop the rover from 100km above the surface, and it would survive the fall without a parachute. 'In a scenario studied by the team (PDF), the robot could be collapsed to a very compact configuration for launch. Once it reaches the moon, it would pop open and drop to the surface, flexing and absorbing the force of impact. By shortening and lengthening the cables that connect its rigid components, the ball bot could then roll about the surface. These same cables could be used to pull back parts of the robot, so that science instruments at the center could be exposed and used.'"
So let me guess. (Score:3)
They shoot the super ball at the target and it bounces back with the data.
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They shoot the super ball at the target and it bounces back with the data.
No, that could knock Titan out of orbit.
I built them already (Score:3)
Anybody remember Sodaconstructor [sodaplay.com]?
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If someone could remake that in 3d, and allow for multiplayer interactions and controllable bots, there is so much more potential in the concept.
Am I the only who saw... (Score:2)
"NASA Could Explode Titan With ..."
Re:Am I the only who saw... (Score:4, Funny)
DO NOT TAUNT the Super Ball Bot
I thought the methane ocean was of interest? (Score:1)
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Not sure how to power a UAV. At that distance solar power is very limited.
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Internal combustion? Take along oxygen and you should be able to burn the atmosphere.
A balloon wouldn't need any fuel, and there are designs to change buoyancy of the balloon so that it could descend to the surface and sample, and then re-ascend.
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Thats a far better idea.
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The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and probably wouldn't burn. Might work for a boat though I hate to think about engineering an internal combustion engine to operate at those temperatures.
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Or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. I assumed that was the meaning, as it's more common, and 'UUV' referred to a waterborne one.
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Life in Titan's oceans??? ummm.. those oceans aren't water!
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Different building blocks is even more difficult. The clas
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NASA demands bouncing... (Score:3)
.
Wake me up when it's actually built (Score:3)
NASA is extremely good at burning through gigabucks doing design studies, 99.9% of which are never built. This is just another one of those designs. I'll be impressed when I see it strapped to a rocket and sent up.
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NASA is extremely good at burning through gigabucks doing design studies, 99.9% of which are never built.
It turns out that if you make the things without the design studies, you end up wasting terabucks.
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Want to talk about gigabucks
in 2011, NASA had a smaller budget than the military air conditioning bill in Iraq/Afghanistan
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning
"..and besides..." (Score:4, Funny)
"It works in Kerbal Space Program." [xkcd.com]
=Smidge=
Those titanians wont know what hit them... (Score:1)
The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. He bounced three metres in the air. Then he bounced 1.8 metres in the air. Then he bounced four metres in the air. Do I make myself clear?
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A few reasons spring to mind:
* Especially with a "messy" mobility system like this, reaction times matter. Granted, when directly overhead 100km only adds about a millisecond of minimum additional round-trip lightspeed lag, but most of the time your satellite will be considerably further away.
* your satellite is in orbit - meaning around 1/2 to 3/4 of the time the planet is between you and your brain, more if you're in a valley. Better hope you're not in a perilous situation when the cord gets cut, and yo
be careful (Score:4, Funny)
Titan will welcome new NASA Tumbleweed Overlords (Score:2)
Science Boner. (Score:1)
You know, I hate war and death and whatnot but some of the technology and equipment of the military gives me what I like to call a War Boner.
This gives me a Science Boner. That's god damn cool, looks like something you'd read about in a science fiction book 20 years ago.
Just wondering (Score:2)
Hpw is it going to get to Titan in the first place? Do we have a rocket that can go that far these days?
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We can send things outside the solar system, for any reasonable definition of "outside the solar system." I'm sure we can get one to fall into a moon part of the way out.
The stuff sent out of the solar system was sent in the 70's -- a lot has changed at JPL/NASA since then.
Even the stuff last sent to Titan was sent before the dot com bubble burst, wasn't it? It just took a while to get there.
Of course, if this thing is in the planning stages, it'll be 2020 before it is "ready to roll" at which point who knows if we'll have a rocket capable of sending something to Titan again....
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New Horizons was launched in 2006. If an Atlas V can launch one of the fastest things ever, why do you think it could not get something to Titan?
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>Do we have a rocket that can go that far these days?
Certainly. The discovery of the "gravitational slingshot" Interplanetary Transport Network decades ago means we can get pretty much anywhere in the solar system with no more energy than it takes to escape the Earth, it just takes a while.
HFB (Score:3)
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball
Exposed? (Score:3)
"These same cables could be used to pull back parts of the robot, so that science instruments at the center could be exposed and used."
Ok, for the first time ever a goat.sx reference would actually be appropriate.
Potential problem not obvious in video (Score:2)
Just from experience in moving spindly legs around rubble (camera tripod), I can see one potential issue the video doesn't make clear - the support struts can easily get wedged in rocks as they move around. Hopefully it can detect this before it bends a strut.
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It looks to me like, unlike a tripod, the support struts all end in 3+ cables connecting to the ends of other struts. Pretty hard to get jammed in a crack when you've got a big spindly "foot" on the end of each rod.
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Sure, but often the device twists in such a way that the various legs are nearly combined.
Also I have had rocks turn over on splayed tripod legs, so the middle of the segments laying over rocky areas may not be safe.
I'm just saying real-life rocks are a lot trickier and more treacherous than the Tron Cubes they have pitted it against thus far.
Titan for now, but think of the possibilities (Score:2)
A risky endevor. (Score:2)
One rule of engineering success is less complexity, fewer moving parts.
Another rule is redundancy.
This project pits them against each other. Where a proposed solution meets contradictory design goals you discover either disaster or elegance.
The greatest and most ancient tool employed by all self improving systems -- even life, neural networks, and science itself -- is to throw things against the wall and see if they stick. This ball bounces, plops, or rolls. I'll be interested to see if can stick, as natu
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One rule of engineering success is less complexity, fewer moving parts.
Curiosity's sky crane showed that's more of a guideline than a rule. I think these crazy contraptions are great. I bet NASA will figure it out if congress lets them...
"I am not a number!" The Rover rover is coming! (Score:1)
They say in the video they could have dozens of them operating together. Did anybody else think of old TV shows, and prepare to panic?
The Rover, "a floating white ball that could coerce, and, if necessary, disable inhabitants of The Village, primarily Number Six."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_(The_Prisoner) [wikipedia.org]
If they come back to Earth like that old Venus probe, we're in trouble.
http://bionic.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Probe [wikia.com]
(Yeah, I remember these episodes of the Six Million Dollar Man from when they came out
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That is PRECISELY the first thing I thought of, and you beat me to the post. Man, that show freaked me out the first time I saw it, when I was a kid.
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actually, that show was transported back in time. it was shot on titan
Vytas SunSpiral (Score:2)
...is the actual name of a leading researcher in this area. He gave a rather fascinating Google TechTalk [youtube.com] a few weeks ago. Well worth the time.