Swimming Robot Tested for Billion-Mile Trip to Saturn Moon

The robot works pretty well — as long as the boxes are pretty much rectangular and aren't moving, says Stanford University'puter science professor Gary Bradski, co-founder of Industrial Perception, the start-up that invented the robot. But it isn't quite ready to replace human workers in the mailroom or on the factory floor."It's easy to get 80 or 90 percent of the way there," he said. " But it's getting the speed and reliability to make it economic. You can't fail very often; otherwise, you're not saving any labor."Getting robots to smell is one of the bigger challenges. A recent project out of the University of Tokyo takes a step in that direction. Scientists there recently unveiled a tiny robot that is driven by a male silkworm moth responding to a female moth's seductive pheromone aroma.

The researchers built a motorized wheeled car that moves when a moth, spurred by the smell, launches into a mating dance of repeated zigzags on top of a trackball, similar to the ones used inside a'puter mouse. As the moth does its dance, sensors transmit its motions to the robot's motors, allowing it to follow the path chosen by the male.It's not filled with liquid methane, nor is it -297 degrees Fahrenheit, but otherwise Laguna Negra does a passable impression of an alien sea. That's because it's surrounded by a barren environment with a thin atmosphere and is vulnerable to storms, avalanches, and possibly volcanoes.Due to global warming, the glacial lake is also rapidly changing, ideal circumstances for a robot being taught to recognize shifts in a fluid environment.

Titan has the distinction of being the only other body in our solar system known to have stable liquid on its surface. That liquid is mostly made of the gases methane and ethane, but the fact that the moon has seas, lakes, rain, and glaciers make it closer to Earth than anything else in our solar system. Related: "Saturn Moon Has Tropical 'Great Salt Lake,' Methane Marshes."The lander's science team, led by SETI astrobiologist Nathalie Cabrol, first launched the Planetary Lake Lander in Laguna Negra in 2011. The prototype robot has spent the last two years exploring its surroundings, determining the lake's size and depth, measuring its pH, and observing all meteorological phenomena.