The job group started building the very first model in 2019 and has actually been making continuous modifications. Since in 2015, they’ve been carrying out month-to-month field tests and refining both the hardware and the software that permits EELS to run autonomously. In its existing form, called EELS 1.0, the robotic weighs about 220 pounds (100 kgs) and is 13 feet (4 meters) long. It’s made up of 10 similar sections that turn, utilizing screw threads for propulsion, traction, and grip. The group has actually been experimenting with a range of screws: white, 8-inch-diameter (20-centimeter-diameter) 3D-printed plastic screws for screening on looser surface, and narrower, sharper black metal screws for ice.
The robotic has actually been tested in sandy, snowy, and icy environments, from the Mars Yard at JPL to a “robot playground” produced at a ski resort in the snowy mountains of Southern California, even at a regional indoor ice rink.
“We have a different philosophy of robot development than traditional spacecraft, with many quick cycles of testing and correcting,” said Hiro Ono, EELS primary private investigator at JPL. “There are dozens of textbooks about how to design a four-wheel vehicle, but there is no textbook about how to design an autonomous snake robot to boldly go where no robot has gone before. We have to write our own. That’s what we’re doing now.”
How EELS Thinks and Moves
Because of the interactions lag time in between Earth and deep space, EELS is developed to autonomously notice its environment, compute danger, travel, and collect information with yet-to-be-determined science instruments. When something fails, the objective is for the robotic to recuperate by itself, without human support.
