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Novel ways to move on other celestial bodies always draw the attention of the space exploration community. Here at UT, we’ve reported on everything from robots that suspend themselves from the walls of Martian caves to robots that hop using jets of locally mined gas. But we haven’t yet reported on the idea of a balloon that “walks.”<\/p>\n
But that is the idea behind the BALloon Locomotion for Extreme Terrain, or BALLET, a project from Hari Nayar, a Principal Roboticist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his colleagues.<\/p>\n
How exactly does a balloon “walk,” you might ask? By picking up and moving one of its six feet. BALLET’s architecture involves a positively buoyant balloon supporting six “feet” attached to adjustable cables. The “feet” are small science packages capable of taking small surface samples or analyzing the chemical composition of the part of the surface it touches.<\/p>\n
Each foot is attached to three cables, individually controlled by pulleys. When a foot is done doing its science work at a given location, BALLET retracts the cables for the foot, lifting it off the surface. It then extends the cables using different lengths for the cables to place the foot in a new location.<\/p>\n \n
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