SpaceHopper - The robot that learned to move in weightlessness
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 เม.ย. 2024
- In the SpaceHopper project, students at ETH Zurich developed a robot capable of moving in low gravity environments through hopping motions. It is intended to be used in future space missions to explore small celestial bodies. The exploration of asteroids and moons could provide insights into the formation of the universe and they may contain valuable minerals that humanity could use in the future.The project began in 2021 as an ETH focusproject for bachelor's students. Now, it is being continued as a regular research project. A particular challenge in developing exploration robots for asteroids is that, unlike larger celestial bodies like Earth, there is low gravity on asteroids and moons. The students have therefore tested their robot's functionality in zero gravity during a parabolic flight. The parabolic flight was conducted in collaboration with the European Space Agency as part of the ESA Academy Experiments Programme.
www.spacehopper.ethz.ch
/ spacehopperethz - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
really interesting project, I'm amazed by the use of the legs as reaction wheels! hope this design gets to fly to space at some point in the future!
How many Cat videos did you guys watch?
Every single one of them was worth it. Congratulations 👏🏼.
quite many actually :)
That thing looks alive
The way I see it, the more robots we can send to space in place of humans, the better.
Also a future where humans just have a bunch of cute, unique robot homies running around seems pretty based and wholesome lol
Congrats on the successful test
Idk how well you guys handled the nausea, but I've gone on 3 of these flights using the american company (Zero-G), and 2 things that helped my colleagues & I a lot were sniffing the alcohol vapor from those small alcohol antiseptic wipes (they provide immediate nausea relief & it is perfectly safe), and lying on your back + staring at a point on the ceiling as much as possible. Also don't look out the windows.
I hope this helps if you guys do another one of these flights.
This was a very cool project, I hope it is worked on further. Calling it now, we'll see something like this on a different planet in the future.
It is built and trained for zero gravity. A planet has gravity. So, no, we will not
Kick it like Boston dynamics 😂
Why do this when you can just get the same thing by taping a bunch of cats together?
no cats were harmed in the making of our experiments :)
It really looks alive
Congratulations team of ETH Zurich!
Thank you!
@@SpaceHopperRobotics - Please could you include some better shots of your mission patches?
Half a century we used to go to the moon every couple of weeks, today this 😬
What was the goal? Maintaining position, a specific orientation, getting to a specific position?
The research is obviously valid, but the flailing arms are a hazard for anything near it, why reaction wheels were not used instead?
Regardless, it was really interesting!!
Agree on the live appearance. To me I saw, an initial panic, the flailing. Then a, ok gotta calm down, it almost relaxes. Tries some moves and adjust as it figures it out.
i see seven future Mark Rober in this video,
one just need; a bad day, a brave decision, and an end of the contact,
also a lot of viewer, but that's a story for another time.
These guys are all smarter than Mark Rober
dude, i didn't compare the smartness of a person, and most of them would probably loves their work so it's fine.
what i mean is one (or two) of them could be famous, become an inspiration of millions of kids, helping disabled people, and make their own company, because we love the company~
the company~ the company~
we love the company~
and the company loves us~
seems like the arms can generate forward motion pretty intense
It looks like when i try and spin myself on the office chair using only my legs, and for that i am proud of the little guy
That's Rocky!
Exactly what I thought
_humm humm_ 🎶🎵
FIST MY BUMP!
Put a small gyroscope at the end of each leg that way it can use the gyroscope to right itself easier and manipulate the leg to fine-tune in righting itself.
This is real spaceengineers stuff there :O
Gyroscopic torque is another methods, one they use on the ISS
Really cool to watch
Nice video. Cool experiment. Are the legs really better than reaction wheels?
Super cool! What you guys learned from the flight ?
Incredible
great job guys, congrats
Thank you!
So cool!
A valiant effort! I would rather use shrouded fans mounted on different sides. It provides much more stable and predictable motion. Using horizontal or vertical slats that can be angled to provide vectored thrust. I think this has already been done in space if I remember correctly.
Super COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love that
Sick !
Reminds me of a Scrambler from “Blindsight”
Ziggy Stardust's band is impressed with this.
Whoa
this looks awesome guys
thank you!
It’s so adorable!
We think so too :)
@@SpaceHopperRobotics 👍
They made a robotic facehugger
Would this be a proven concept of inertial propulsion then?
These guys look young. I’m rooting for them and the future.
Thank you!
Pretty cool
insane
Ok, but why..? Are there no more efficient ways to move in space?
This IS a more efficient way to move in space
How do I sign up to experience this!?
Neuralink
I'm worried about robots and possible AGI or more. So please don't teach them how to move in space, if it goes wrong on earth and we do lose control they gotta stay here, not floating all over the galaxy😂
Reminds me of AMBAC from gundam
I bet rocky would look like this, you know from the book project hail mary
wind resistance?
Wind resistance in a vacuum?
well...maybe in the plane since its not a perfect model but I doubt is a problem in space most of the time, however there is thermal/solar wind!
dope
The bit you want to see: 2:16
cant it be done with gyros and linear rail?
CMG would be a better choice
@@Laminar-Flow CMGs have the problem of singularities thought, basically there are positions in which the CMG can no longer make the object change positions , due to the fact that the CMG doesn't produce useful output torque along certain directions , so maybe legs/arms doesn't have that issue and that's why they are trying to use them ?
@@ulforcemegamon3094 That doesn’t seem like the reason they’re avoiding CMG’s
This also isn’t the case with more than 2 axes / flywheels within the CMG; multiple CMG’s can be employed to solve this
i didnt finish the book but reminds of the Hail Mary alien!
"I watch you sleep, question?"
@@thepongpol3073 no I didn't watch this video either just the way it looks
@@DansChewy no its just a quote from the alien in the book
Looks like some kind of sea creature
Wouldn't it be more efficient to use gyroscopes for this?
Probably, but I think the design requirements are that it must be able to orient and jump.
Yes.
It’s called a control moment gyroscope, and most satellites use it for orientation
gyroscopes would also mean extra actuators and heavy discs which increases the weight and size of the robot and therefore increases launch cost. plus you have another subsystem that could fail.
@@moriz_b2730 Yeah it’s (maybe) another subsystem that could fail, but you’re flat wrong about everything else. It’s not a “gyroscope,” it’s a CMG. They are two different things but commonly misconstrued. There wouldn’t need to be extra “actuators,” there would be less- an actuator is not a CMG and these arms have 6 total motors if not more in them. CMG’s are also incredibly power efficient for the movement they output; not sure how efficient the movement shown in the video actually is but it doesn’t look very efficient. It’s unnecessary and not something NASA (for example) would ever design to solve the prescribed problem.
3u Cubesats use CMG’s, as does the ISS. They aren’t heavy if the robot isn’t heavy (basic physics there), and that robot is not heavy by any stretch of the imagination. I’d say this algorithm that has the robot flailing its arms in an uncontrolled flight regime is more likely to fail than the literal 50+ year old technology that allows most satellites in orbit to reorient.
Don’t know about you, but US educated engineer here who’s worked on cubesats before. It’s a problem that’s been solved before with a simpler, more efficient, and more predictable solution. There’s a reason we don’t reorient satellites with multiple flailing 2-axis arms.
@@moriz_b2730 A CMG isn’t an actuator; the robot would require less actuators than the 6 present for attitude control with a CMG. It would require zero for attitude control itself, and could use much less complex arms (and kinematics) for movement in low-g. Using arms for attitude control is slow and relatively inefficient for the task at hand
Also, CMG’s weigh as little as 250-300g off the shelf and take up about 0.5u of space in a cubesat operating on less than 1 watt of power. Even then, you can consider magnetic torquers or reaction wheels.
What has more failure modes than a 50-year old attitude control system used on the ISS and countless satellites is a new form of autonomous attitude control that is essentially impossible to test without a flight to the moon, would take longer to react to situations, and is inefficient. All in the name of replacing a system that would weigh less than 1-5% of the robots weight?
Mobile Suit Gundam AMBAC system
Someone's been reading project hail mary... or was that 5 sided..?
Hello T.A.R.S.
Alternatively, just use a Control Moment Gyroscope like satellites do and use simpler arms to push off of surfaces, couple with fans given operation in an atmospheric environment (space station), or with reaction thrusters for big movements in open space… Far less development cost & uncertainty, more predictable kinematics, and more predictable movement patterns given you wouldn’t then need to make the thing flail its arms to reorient.
Cool concept and integration and I always will applaud applied engineering skills but this is better in a sci-fi book than it will be practical compared to existing technology. There’s a reason satellites don’t use jointed arms for moment control, and rovers don’t use arms to crawl like Rocky from PHM. My college satellite team in the US developed its own cubesat-scale Control Moment Gyroscope for less than about €1,000 when I was in uni (provided access to CNC). Seems like a lot of engineering and very expensive testing to replace a more efficient technology.
The robot is designed for controlled low gravity locomotion, such as on asteroids or moons. It uses its legs to jump to a new desired position. Since it has legs anyways and we want to minimize the size, weight and complexity of the system, we omit gyros and use the legs for attitude control.
@@alexanderspiridonov4353 I read the caption and I understand the purpose of the robot but what I’m saying is this is an inefficient way to go about solving the problem. The space station stuff I mentioned was hypothetical, but in terms of the quoted purpose:
First off, you can’t tell me honestly as an engineer that size and weight are a limiting factor to implementing a CMG when 2u cubesats have similar systems. Our CMG was ~1u and
Different technologies for different purposes.
@@party4keeps28 Not really how engineering works; you can’t boil down design decisions to a statement like that. It needs to be quantified, weighted, analyzed for failure modes, tested, and evaluated.
Either way, that statement would prove the point that using different technology (arm movements) than industry standard (CMG) to adjust attitude in a (flying or in this case hopping) spacecraft is not apt
@@Laminar-Flow In relation to your first paragraph, that's EXACTLY what they're doing.
If everyone had your mentality and stuck with the "industry standard," we'd never get anywhere.
It doesn’t look ,like it’s doing anything
It may be a bit confusing because the commands are randomized, but the robot changes its attitude to commanded orientations using its legs, and jumps to commanded velocities.
Looks pretty active in orienting itself to me. Seems to be able to perfectly align itself with anything around it in a second, even humans would struggle to do that without using a grip on something solid.
Lowkey looks like magic. It flails its legs around and all of a sudden floats in a direction. Insane
@@boombox789 I believe they just made this up so they could ride the zero-g
@@scottw595 haha This hadn't occurred to me but it makes a lot of sense. The plane tickets probably cost a lot less than that robot cost to build though
Adding dramatic music isn’t always a good thing. This video would be better without it.
I dont thing that robot would work in real zero g
this is real zero g :)
weightlessness aint low gravity space
I’m no expert but everything about this design looks wrong. It’s a danger to people and equipment flailing pointlessly. A 4th arm in a tetrahedron would make better sense than a flat triangle. Does it lack eyes and distance detection? Arms that telescope or unfurl would be safer and less destabilizing. Etc. It’s a neat and worthy project - but do better!
Not impressed 😑
JINX!