[X] My Assistant

[lyford]

No word if it will be a Transformer

Japan aims for walking robot on the moon by 2020

TOKYO (AP) — Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.

Also, if it is a humanoid machine with artificial intelligence, at what point do we stop saying it is still unmanned space flight?

[nprev]

Phil's right, though; moving parts should always be minimized, and that's the very definition of actuators. Still, as the state of the art advances, there may well come a time when a 'walking rover' might be the best solution for reaching high-value difficult-access places of interest on Mars.

Remember the rock gardens of Chryse (V1 & Pathfinder) & Utopia (V2)? The MERs would have had an exceedingly hard time getting anywhere at all had they had the misfortune to land in similar places.

One underappreciated pioneering aspect of the MERs, BTW, is the amount of way-beyond-the-design-envelope testing that they're putting their own actuator suites through almost every day. Bet that there are some vastly improved designs to come in terms of reliability from their lessons.

[Geert]

Bet that there are some vastly improved designs to come in terms of reliability from their lessons.

I think there are already actuators in industrial applications which work for years and years in environments which are far more extreme then the surface of Mars, however these are mostly far too heavy and far to power-hungry to use on a Mars spacecraft. It has been stated many times already but each spacecraft is a compromise in how far you can get in making it perfect and still remain (more or less) within budget.

I have no doubt it is already possible to design and build a 6-legged robot which is rugged enough to walk for many years on Mars, however you will need a Saturn 5 to launch it to Mars and I don't want to think about the costs...

Still, if you look to the HiRISE images, in the near future we will need something which can handle much rougher terrain then MER/MSL if we like to explore some really interesting places..

[MahFL]

I just don't see how 2 legs can be safe. If you think about it humans have 4 appendges, not 2 legs. We of course used to walk on 4 legs.......we only evolved to bi-pedal because that is what was needed to survive and evolve due to our enviroment ( open plains I beleive ).
So bottom line is, min of 4 legs makes sence.