NASA Ames Research Center engineers are developing an intelligent robot snake that may help explore other worlds and perform construction tasks in space. The robot serpent, able to independently dig in loose extraterrestrial soil, smart enough to slither into cracks in a planet's surface and capable of planning routes over or around obstacles, could be ready for space travel in five years, NASA engineers predict.

"The snake will provide us with flexibility and robustness in space," said Gary Haith, lead "snakebot" engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center located in California's Silicon Valley. "A snakebot could navigate over rough, steep terrain where a wheeled robotic rover would likely get stuck or topple."

"One of our first steps was to make a simple mechanical test snake, and we constructed it in less than a day thanks to previous work at other labs," said Haith. "It is a direct model of a 'polybot' developed by Mark Yim of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, with whom we are cooperating. We have slightly different electronics in our version."

Robotic serpents can "inchworm" ahead, can flip themselves backward over low obstacles, can coil and can side-wind, Haith said. "Future work will enable the snake to become a mast or a grasping arm. A rover would need to have a dedicated mast and arm that would cost extra weight, money and time."

"The key part of what we are striving for in the second snakebot version and beyond is sensor-based control in which the robot uses its sensors to decide what to do,'" Haith said. "In coming years, we hope to make snakebot muscles out of artificial plastic or rubber materials that will bend when electricity is applied to them," he added. "This design change will reduce the snake's weight considerably, and the robot would be very robust, like an automobile tire."

For more robotic snake information: http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/snakebot/

Contact: John Bluck (650) 604-5026