Snakes on a Spaceship!

Sending ‘snakebots’ to Explore Mars

By Samba Lampich

It sounds like a sequel to the movie Snakes on a Plane, but sending snakes to the red planet might not be a fictional plot.

Radio Silence 

NASA has landed four rovers on Mars, and these solar-powered robots have fixed wheels and robotic arms that limit their ability to traverse the Martian landscape and gather samples. Their fixed wheels and arms don’t offer the flexibility to maneuver out of tight spots or wind through rough terrain easily. In 2009, Mars Rover Spirit got stuck in a patch of loose soil on the edge of a small crater, and in March 2010 it stopped communication with Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) began thinking about alternative forms for robots that could explore other planets.

Unleashing the 'Snakebot'

Researchers at the SINTEF Research Institute in Norway and at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology came upon the ambitious idea to use slithering snake-like robots to explore Mars. Asket Transeth, a senior research scientist at SINTEF, and his colleagues are conducting a feasibility study to determine how such robots would perform on the red planet. The proposed snake robot wouldn’t replace the rover, but augment it.

snakes-spaceship

SINTEF researchers Pål Liljebäck and Aksel Transeth, and Knut Robert Fossum of NTNU’s CIRiS, with Wheeko the snake robot 

“One option is to make the robot into one of the vehicle’s arms, with the ability to disconnect and reconnect itself, so that it can be lowered to the ground, where it can crawl about independently,” Transeth explained in a press release.

The researchers believe that by combining the properties of a rover and the agility of a snake, the robot would create an ideal exploration dynamic. The rover would travel long distances, examining samples, and the snake would detach and slither into inaccessible places like underneath rocks or in craters. And if the rover got stuck, the snake robot could conceivably be used to help pull it loose.

Using a snake robot would also change how samples are analyzed. Currently, soil samples are analyzed on the rover itself and the results communicated back to Earth. The snake robot could be constructed to collect samples and return them to Earth so that scientist could analyze them directly.

The ESA plans to send its own rover, ExoMars, in 2016 and 2018 while NASA is planning its own mission in 2020. It is possible that any of these rovers could rely on a snake robot.

Extension Questions

  • What are some other applications of snake-like robots here on Earth?
  • What are some obstacles the ‘snake robot’ would encounter on Earth and other planets?