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Ambiguous landing The tiny LEV2 spherical rover looks cool, hope it made it https://global.jaxa.jp/activity/pr/jaxas/no088/03.html https://global.jaxa.jp/activ

Ambiguous landing The tiny LEV2 spherical rover looks cool, hope it made it https://global.jaxa.jp/activity/pr/jaxas/no088/03.html https://global.jaxa.jp/activity/pr/jaxas/no088/03.html

rwmj 3y ago
I hope Tomy company is the very same that did all the toys and robots in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomy
- ginko 3y ago
  It is. They mentioned in the live stream.
samstave 3y ago
I wish we could "cluster bomb" celestial bodies with such spheres where they have a sensor core and just roam about. Imagine deploying a body of bots via a star-link-type-launcher that just spits out a bunch of these guys as it orbits the moon - then they land and roll araound and comm back to the deployment sat and talk to eachother as the Roomba the F out of the moon and give all sensor data back to the sat launcher as it orbits...
- Teever 3y ago
  I had similar thoughts when I saw the flea robot from Boston Dynamics.[0] Imagine exploring mars with a combination of a dozen or so flea type robots that have solar panels on them and a robot arm for sample retrieval that can fold up into the body. They can trundle around the surface taking video and picking up samples as desired and then return to the stationary lander that they came from when needed. The stationary lander can have all of the sample analysis machinery, seismograph, weather station, as well as a high bandwidth uplink to satellites in orbit / Earth. Keep landing more and more of these within the the same area so that the fleas can travel between the stationary landers as they travel further and further, heck you can even form a mesh network between all of the machines on the ground, and offload a lot of heavy computational processing to the stationary landers that could be powered by an RTG. You can risk individual fleas doing dangerous things that you otherwise wouldn't want to risk one large all in one lander on, as losing a flea only degrades a small fraction of your research and if fleas get stuck somewhere another flea can attempt to rescue it. You could even have the fleas return home to overwinter if they're not designed to withstand the winter. There's so much versatility that you gain in a model like this with small disposable rover robots paired with massive stationary landers. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Can't believe that video is >10 years old. The 'big wheels on a pancake' form factor is easily available now in <$100 toys but inexplicably I don't see anyone using the lever+piston design for upward locomotion...although I suspect it can only pull that trick once or twice on a single charge. I am very much with you on the 'numerous and cheap' approach to space exploration. That said, the minimal viable robot for and environment like the Moon is not an easy spec to meet, since it needs to operate in wild extremes of temperature that are hard to test for. Then again, cubesats built with very cheap hardware have proved surprisingly versatile.
    - samstave 3y ago
      Jiminy crickets, I am also gobsmacked for it being that long ago... I forgot about this. I wonder if the tech was "squashed" because of the implications? If that little jumping mechanism were some small, cheap, open-sorce thing, I can only imagine it being weaponized... However check out this cool vid on Worlds Highest Jumping Robots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daaDuC1kbds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daaDuC1kbds
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      > [...] environment like the Moon is not an easy spec to meet, since it needs to operate in wild extremes of temperature that are hard to test for. Then again, cubesats built with very cheap hardware have proved surprisingly versatile. Perhaps the worst part of the lunar operating conditions is the dust. Very small particles, very abrasive, static clings to everything. Cubesats don't encounter dust. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/when-the-moon-dust-settles-it-wont-settle-in-vipers-wheels/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/when-the-mo... https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/dust-an-out-of-this-world-problem/ https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/dust-an-out-of-this-wor...
- bboygravity 3y ago
  Musk/SpaceX is going to bring Starlink to mars, that would help for what you are describing.
- FranOntanaya 3y ago
  Seismic sensors would definitely benefit from this. Scientists have to get clever to estimate the direction of events when using a single sensor like on the InSight lander.
cuSetanta 3y ago
The forst model of that rover was on the ispace lander and I had the pleasure of working with the Jaxa team integrating it. Was super fun to see it rolling back and forth and taking images in the test facility. It was the payload I was most sad to have lost on our crash.

Ambiguous landing The tiny LEV2 spherical rover looks cool, hope it made it https://global.jaxa.jp/activity/pr/jaxas/no088/03.html https://global.jaxa.jp/activity/pr/jaxas/no088/03.html

rwmj 3y ago

I hope Tomy company is the very same that did all the toys and robots in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomy

ginko 3y ago
It is. They mentioned in the live stream.

samstave 3y ago

I wish we could "cluster bomb" celestial bodies with such spheres where they have a sensor core and just roam about. Imagine deploying a body of bots via a star-link-type-launcher that just spits out a bunch of these guys as it orbits the moon - then they land and roll araound and comm back to the deployment sat and talk to eachother as the Roomba the F out of the moon and give all sensor data back to the sat launcher as it orbits...

Teever 3y ago
I had similar thoughts when I saw the flea robot from Boston Dynamics.[0] Imagine exploring mars with a combination of a dozen or so flea type robots that have solar panels on them and a robot arm for sample retrieval that can fold up into the body. They can trundle around the surface taking video and picking up samples as desired and then return to the stationary lander that they came from when needed. The stationary lander can have all of the sample analysis machinery, seismograph, weather station, as well as a high bandwidth uplink to satellites in orbit / Earth. Keep landing more and more of these within the the same area so that the fleas can travel between the stationary landers as they travel further and further, heck you can even form a mesh network between all of the machines on the ground, and offload a lot of heavy computational processing to the stationary landers that could be powered by an RTG. You can risk individual fleas doing dangerous things that you otherwise wouldn't want to risk one large all in one lander on, as losing a flea only degrades a small fraction of your research and if fleas get stuck somewhere another flea can attempt to rescue it. You could even have the fleas return home to overwinter if they're not designed to withstand the winter. There's so much versatility that you gain in a model like this with small disposable rover robots paired with massive stationary landers. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Can't believe that video is >10 years old. The 'big wheels on a pancake' form factor is easily available now in <$100 toys but inexplicably I don't see anyone using the lever+piston design for upward locomotion...although I suspect it can only pull that trick once or twice on a single charge. I am very much with you on the 'numerous and cheap' approach to space exploration. That said, the minimal viable robot for and environment like the Moon is not an easy spec to meet, since it needs to operate in wild extremes of temperature that are hard to test for. Then again, cubesats built with very cheap hardware have proved surprisingly versatile.
  - samstave 3y ago
    Jiminy crickets, I am also gobsmacked for it being that long ago... I forgot about this. I wonder if the tech was "squashed" because of the implications? If that little jumping mechanism were some small, cheap, open-sorce thing, I can only imagine it being weaponized... However check out this cool vid on Worlds Highest Jumping Robots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daaDuC1kbds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daaDuC1kbds
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    > [...] environment like the Moon is not an easy spec to meet, since it needs to operate in wild extremes of temperature that are hard to test for. Then again, cubesats built with very cheap hardware have proved surprisingly versatile. Perhaps the worst part of the lunar operating conditions is the dust. Very small particles, very abrasive, static clings to everything. Cubesats don't encounter dust. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/when-the-moon-dust-settles-it-wont-settle-in-vipers-wheels/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/when-the-mo... https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/dust-an-out-of-this-world-problem/ https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/dust-an-out-of-this-wor...
bboygravity 3y ago
Musk/SpaceX is going to bring Starlink to mars, that would help for what you are describing.
FranOntanaya 3y ago
Seismic sensors would definitely benefit from this. Scientists have to get clever to estimate the direction of events when using a single sensor like on the InSight lander.

cuSetanta 3y ago

The forst model of that rover was on the ispace lander and I had the pleasure of working with the Jaxa team integrating it. Was super fun to see it rolling back and forth and taking images in the test facility. It was the payload I was most sad to have lost on our crash.