NASA team studies ball bot as future space explorer

(Phys.org) —A July NASA report on the Super Ball Bot said that lightweight and low-cost missions will become increasingly important to NASA's exploration goals. Current robot designs call for a combination of devices such as parachutes, retrorockets and impact balloons to minimize impact forces and to place a robot in a proper orientation. Is there a different model one can consider for future explorations to accommodate NASA goals? A detailed report in IEEE Spectrum looks at a team at NASA Ames Research Center who "suspect there might be a way to make solar system exploration much simpler and cheaper, by embedding science instruments inside a flexible, deformable robotic exoskeleton."

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