Watch This Origami Robot Shapeshift for Space Travel

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If you think your Roomba automated vacuum cleaner is a cool device, just wait until you see Mori3. This is a robot made up of triangular modules like a Lego structure, but it is flexible in its actions and construction. And flexible doesn't just mean it's able to do many things. Robots like Mori3 can change their own shape and attach to others! See what Swiss researchers have come up with to increase flexibility and versatility from existing robot designs.

Mori3 about to crab-walk (techexplorist.com)

There has always been debate about whether to send people or robots to explore space. Robots would eliminate the risk to human injury or death. But what functions are capable of robots, and what has been done to date? China, the USA, and the USSR each landed and operated various rovers on the Moon: Lunokhod 1 and 2, three Apollo rovers, and Yutu & Yutu 2. The Apollo rovers were manned vehicles, so they may not count as purely robotic devices.

Only the USA has successfully landed rovers on Mars: Sojourner, Spirit and its twin Opportunity, and Curiosity. In addition, the USA has also operated the first aerial device Ingenuity (in conjunction with the Perseverance rover) on Mars. All of these except the Apollo rover and Perseverance were designed to move about, take samples, and record various measurements. 

But the USA and Japan have also succeeded in landing probes on asteroids. The USA was the first to orbit and the first to set down on an asteroid 433 Eros with its NEAR Shoemaker probe in 2001. Japan's first attempt was the Hayabusa spacecraft which set down and fired projectiles to raise sample particles from asteroid Itokawa, then return to Earth. The Hayabusa 2 craft dropped its robotic MASCOT probe instead, and it made measurements to beam back via the orbiting mother craft. Recently, 

Hayabusa 1 (left) hovering over Itokawa; MASCOT probe (right) on Ryugu

Except for the Apollo manned rover, these devices were all meant to be operated remotely from Earth. And, they had specific tasks for viewing the landscape, taking samples in various ways, and sometimes analyzing the samples (or sending them back to Earth). The Mori3 is different. Watch this video below for its current abilities in different modular setups.

From YouTube

Designed in 2017 by the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab in the School of Engineering at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Mori3 can change its shape by coupling or uncoupling its triangular modules. 

Two Mori3 modules (from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne)

• In one design, it can act like a robotic arm to push things. 
• With its central wheel, it can be mobile. Each module does not appear to have any more function than that, but by moving around, it can travel to other modules to link up.
• After joining with several modules, it can form a continuous track that rolls. This might be more suitable locomotion in certain cases compared to the single triangles wheeling about.
• A combination of modules can move into a standing position in preparation for walking sideways like a crab.
• Around 1:40 in the video, we can see some human user interaction of a different type. By operating a computer with a device to scan their hand movements, people can instruct Mori3 to change its shape for whatever purpose.

How it will potentially interact with humans aboard a space station, for example, is depicted below. On the left, it is floating with 3 modules attached to a central one. In the middle top, an astronaut seems to be interacting with a large sheet of Mori3 modules. On the top right, we see an astronaut controlling two arms of a Mori3 that have pincer-like ends to grip and move something. On the bottom, there is a network of Mori3 modules linking up with a cube-like probe outside of the station.

Illustration from Azo Robotics

In this fashion, a Mori3 modular robot can accomplish three functions:

• moving around, 
• handling and transporting objects, and 
• interacting with users.

Up to now, the only robot to interact with humans inside a space station is the Astrobee, a box-like robot (one foot [30 cm] long on each side) that moves about on its own by flying in zero-g with fans attached to its body. Three models have been designed (named Honey, Bumble, and Queen). Bumble was the first to be used in 2016, and Honey & Queen were unleashed in 2019. Each has a docking station where they can automatically return and recharge without human assistance. 

Watch this video below for more on Astrobee, or go to this link to read more.

From YouTube