A snake-like robot made of giant screws and flexible joints that can travel across hard or loose surfaces and worm into tiny spaces such as tubes and tunnels may be key to exploring the interior of Saturn鈥檚 icy moon Enceladus.
While wheels or legs can traverse flat ground more efficiently, snake-like robots have several advantages. They can conform to tight bends and their small cross section allows them to fit through narrow spaces that would block other robot designs.
The ARCSnake is made of modular segments and propels itself with Archimedes screws. These helical devices, named after the ancient Greek philosopher, push material backwards to move the robot forwards. Half the screws rotate clockwise and half anticlockwise to prevent the robot from simply rolling sideways 鈥� although making them both rotate in the same direction does allow it to quickly roll sideways along flat ground when convenient.
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The motors, control systems and sensors are housed inside the hollow screws and the 6.1-kilogram robot is operated by a human controller manipulating a miniature scale model of it remotely. Due to the robot鈥檚 numerous joints, this is currently the most intuitive way to steer it, but future versions designed for exploration could be controlled differently or even entirely automated.
Parts of the machine were inspired by previous work into a device designed for colonoscopies, but it is now being investigated by NASA鈥檚 Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a possible mission to Saturn鈥檚 icy moon Enceladus. A much longer version of ARCSnake with 30 links may be able to deploy from a lander, traverse the craggy ground and wind into one of the thermal vents that pepper the moon鈥檚 surface to explore what lies beneath.
at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues hope to work on an improved version of the device for NASA in coming months.
鈥淭hey want to go down the plume vents and go through these ice caves and collect samples, and we鈥檒l feed [data] back to Earth and see what they find,鈥� he says.
Richter says the robot would be able to explore vents and even carve through solid ice on Enceladus because the metal screws would generate heat to melt a path.
The team is also working on a waterproof version of ARCSnake that will allow it to explore the ocean off California. Such a robot would be able to operate on land, in water or even in tight caves or crevices on the ocean floor.
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