When it lands on Mars, SpaceBok will become the first powered four-legged robot to traverse the Red Planet. This quadruped robot was designed and built by a Swiss student team from ETH Zurich and ZHAW Zurich, with testing currently taking place using robotic facilities at ESA’s ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands. Unlike other robots that use at least three legs stay on the ground at all times, dynamic walking allows for gaits with full flight phases during which all legs stay off the ground.
Animals utilize dynamic gaits for to their efficiency, but until recently, the computational power and algorithms required for control made it challenging to build into robots. SpaceBok could eventually jump up to 6.6-feet high in lunar gravity, although once it comes off the ground it would need to stabilize itself to come down again safely.
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Astronauts moving in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon adopted jumping instinctively. SpaceBok could potentially go up to 2 m high in lunar gravity, although such a height poses new challenges. Once it comes off the ground the legged robot needs to stabilise itself to come down again safely – it’s basically behaving like a mini-spacecraft at this point,” said team member Alexander Dietsche.
