A swarm of tiny robots destined to search for life on a distant moon recently began its journey in a swimming pool here on Earth.
The SWIM robots – short for Sensing With Independent Microswimmers – demonstrated impressive maneuverability during recent tests in the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) pool. Propelled by propellers, the miniature, wedge-shaped robots steered themselves to stay on course, performed a back-and-forth “lawnmower” pattern and even spelled out “JPL,” according to one NASA statement.
Designed to one day search for evidence of life in the salty ocean beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa, these robots could play a key role in detecting chemical and temperature signals that could indicate alien life, according to scientists at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL), who designed and tested the robots.
“People may wonder: Why is NASA developing an underwater robot for space exploration?” said Ethan Schaler, principal investigator of the project at JPL. “It’s because there are places in the solar system where we want to go to look for life, and we think life needs water.”
“We need robots that can explore these environments – autonomously, hundreds of millions of miles from home,” he added.
The latest prototypes are 3D printed plastics assembled using cheap, commercially made motors and electronics. These robotic swimmers would also eventually be equipped with underwater wireless communications systems to transmit data and triangulate their positions as they explore the oceans of distant icy moons.
The robot used for the pool tests was approximately 42 centimeters long. The team hopes to eventually achieve that bring it down up to about 12 inches long, no bigger than a cell phone. To ensure he could be rescued if necessary during one of the 20 test laps in the 23-metre pool, he was attached to a fishing line while an engineer walked alongside with the fishing rod in his hand.
“Underwater robots are generally very difficult, and this is just the first in a series of designs we need to work on to prepare for a journey to an ocean world,” says Schaler. “But it is proof that we can build these robots with the necessary capabilities and begin to understand the challenges they face during an underground mission.”
Engineers, meanwhile, are testing SWIM robots in computer simulations that mimic the pressure and gravity the robots would encounter on the moon. By repeatedly sending such palm-sized robots to search for signs of life in those virtual environments, scientists say they optimize the robots’ design and hone their ability to collect scientific data in unfamiliar terrain.
A key innovation developed for the robot swarm is a small multi-sensor chip, developed by engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, that is capable of measuring temperature, pressure, acidity, conductivity and chemical composition – all critical factors in the search for life. .
It will be years before the bots can wade through Europa’s hidden ocean, which scientists suspect holds twice as much liquid water as all of Earth’s oceans combined. Thanks to this vast, subterranean ocean, Europa is considered one of the most promising places in our solar system to search for extraterrestrial life. The moon was studied extensively in the 1990s by NASA’s Galileo mission convincing evidence of the moon’s hidden ocean. The next robotic mission to study Europe, Europa Clipperis underway on a four-year investigation into the moon’s potential to support some form of extraterrestrial life.