MSGID: 1:317/3 6400266b   
   PID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08   
   TID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08   
    Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trick inspires robotic exploration of   
   caves on Mars and beyond    
      
     Date:   
         March 1, 2023   
     Source:   
         University of Arizona   
     Summary:   
         Future space missions likely will send robots to scout out   
         underground habitats for astronauts. Engineers have now developed   
         a system that would enable autonomous vehicles to explore caves,   
         lava tubes and even oceans on other worlds on their own.   
      
      
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   FULL STORY   
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   House hunting on Mars could soon become a thing, and researchers at   
   the University of Arizona are already in the business of scouting real   
   estate that future astronauts could use as habitats. Researchers in the   
   UArizona College of Engineering have developed technology that would allow   
   a flock of robots to explore subsurface environments on other worlds.   
      
      
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   "Lava tubes and caves would make perfect habitats for astronauts because   
   you don't have to build a structure; you are shielded from harmful   
   cosmic radiation, so all you need to do is make it pretty and cozy,"   
   said Wolfgang Fink, an associate professor of electrical and computer   
   engineering at UArizona.   
      
   Fink is lead author of a new paper in Advances in Space Research that   
   details a communication network that would link rovers, lake landers and   
   even submersible vehicles through a so-called mesh topology network,   
   allowing the machines to work together as a team, independently from   
   human input. According to Fink and his co-authors, the approach could   
   help address one of NASA's Space Technology Grand Challenges by helping   
   overcome the limited ability of current technology to safely traverse   
   environments on comets, asteroids, moons and planetary bodies. In a   
   nod to the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," the researchers named their   
   patent-pending concept the "Breadcrumb-Style Dynamically Deployed   
   Communication Network" paradigm, or DDCN.   
      
   A fairy tale inspires the future "If you remember the book, you know   
   how Hansel and Gretel dropped breadcrumbs to make sure they'd find their   
   way back," said Fink, founder and director of the Visual and Autonomous   
   Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at Caltech and UArizona. "In our   
   scenario, the 'breadcrumbs' are miniaturized sensors that piggyback on   
   the rovers, which deploy the sensors as they traverse a cave or other   
   subsurface environment."  Continuously monitoring their environment and   
   maintaining awareness of where they are in space, the rovers proceed   
   on their own, connected to each other via a wireless data connection,   
   deploying communication nodes along the way. Once a rover senses the   
   signal is fading but still within range, it drops a communication node,   
   regardless of how much distance has actually passed since it placed the   
   last node.   
      
   "One of the new aspects is what we call opportunistic deployment --   
   the idea that you deploy the 'breadcrumbs' when you have to and not   
   according to a previously planned schedule," Fink said.   
      
   All the while, there is no need for input from the mother rover;   
   each subordinate rover will make that determination on its own, Fink   
   added. The system can work in one of two ways, Fink explained. In one,   
   the mother rover acts as a passive recipient, collecting data transmitted   
   by the rovers doing the exploration. In the other, the mother rover acts   
   as the orchestrator, controlling the rovers' moves like a puppet master.   
      
   Machines take over The new concept dovetails with the tier-scalable   
   reconnaissance paradigm devised by Fink and colleagues in the early   
   2000s. This idea envisions a team of robots operating at different   
   command levels -- for example, an orbiter controlling a blimp, which   
   in turn controls one or more landers or rovers on the ground. Already,   
   space missions have embraced this concept, several with participation   
   by UArizona researchers. For example, on Mars, the Perseverance rover is   
   commanding Ingenuity, a robotic helicopter. A concept for another mission,   
   which ultimately was not selected for funding, proposed sending an orbiter   
   carrying a balloon and a lake lander to study one of the hydrocarbon   
   seas on Saturn's moon Titan. The breadcrumb approach takes the idea one   
   step further by providing a robust platform allowing robotic explorers   
   to operate underground or even submerged in liquid environments. Such   
   swarms of individual, autonomous robots could also aid in search and   
   rescue efforts in the wake of natural disasters on Earth, Fink said.   
      
   Fink said the biggest challenge, apart from getting the rovers inside   
   the subsurface environment in the first place, is to retrieve the data   
   they record underground and bring it back to the surface. The DDCN   
   concept allows a team of rovers to navigate even convoluted underground   
   environments without ever losing contact to their "mother rover" on the   
   surface. Outfitted with a light detection and ranging system, or lidar,   
   they could even map out cave passages in all three dimensions, not unlike   
   the drones that can be seen exploring an alien spacecraft in the movie   
   "Prometheus."  "Once deployed, our sensors automatically establish a   
   nondirected mesh network, which means each node updates itself about   
   each node around it," said Fink, who first detailed the DDCN concept in   
   a proposal to NASA in 2019.   
      
   "They can switch between each other and compensate for dead spots   
   and signal blackouts," added Mark Tarbell, paper co-author and senior   
   research scientist in Fink's laboratory. "If some of them die, there   
   still is connectivity through the remaining nodes, so the mother rover   
   never loses connection to the farthest node in the network."  Mission of   
   no return The robust network of communication nodes ensures all the data   
   collected by the robotic explorers make it back to the mother rover on   
   the surface. Therefore, there is no need to retrieve the robots once   
   they have done their job, said Fink, who published the idea of using   
   groups of expendable mobile robotic surface probes as early as 2014.   
      
   "They're designed to be expendable," he said. "Instead of wasting   
   resources to get them into the cave and back out, it makes more sense   
   to have them go as far as they possibly can and leave them behind once   
   they have fulfilled their mission, run out of power or succumbed to a   
   hostile environment."  "The communication network approach introduced   
   in this new paper has the potential to herald a new age of planetary   
   and astrobiological discoveries," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, president   
   of the German Astrobiological Society and author of many publications   
   on extraterrestrial life. "It finally allows us to explore Martian   
   lava tube caves and the subsurface oceans of the icy moons - - places   
   where extraterrestrial life might be present."  The proposed concept   
   "holds magic," according to Victor Baker, a UArizona Regents Professor   
   of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, Geosciences and Planetary   
   Sciences."The most amazing discoveries in science come about when advances   
   in technology provide both first-time access to a thing or place and the   
   means of communicating what is thereby discovered to creative minds that   
   are seeking understanding," Baker said.   
      
   Exploring hidden ocean worlds In places that call for submersible   
   robots, the system could consist of a lander -- either floating on   
   a lake, as might be the case on Titan, or sitting on the ice atop a   
   subsurface ocean like on Europa -- that is connected to the submarine,   
   for example through a long cable. Here the communication nodes would act   
   as repeaters, boosting the signal in regular intervals to prevent it from   
   degrading. Importantly, Fink pointed out, the nodes have the capabilities   
   to gather data themselves -- for example measuring pressure, salinity,   
   temperature and other chemical and physical parameters -- and to ingest   
   the data into the cable connecting back to the lander.   
      
   "Imagine you make it all the way to Europa, you melt your way through   
   miles of ice, make it down to the subsurface ocean, where you find   
   yourself surrounded by alien life, but you have no way of getting data   
   back to the surface," he said. "That's the scenario we need to avoid."   
   Having developed the rovers and the communication technology, Fink's   
   group is now working on building the actual mechanism by which the rovers   
   would deploy the communication nodes.   
      
   "Basically, we're going to teach our 'Hansels' and 'Gretels' how to   
   drop the breadcrumbs so they add up to a functioning mesh communication   
   network," Fink said.   
      
       * RELATED_TOPICS   
             o Space_&_Time   
                   # Space_Exploration # NASA # Mars   
             o Matter_&_Energy   
                   # Engineering # Robotics_Research # Nature_of_Water   
             o Computers_&_Math   
                   # Robotics # Computers_and_Internet #   
                   Artificial_Intelligence   
       * RELATED_TERMS   
             o Exploration_of_Mars o Robotic_surgery o Humanoid_robot o   
             Industrial_robot o Space_exploration o European_Space_Agency   
             o NASA o Robot   
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Arizona. Original   
   written by Daniel Stolte.   
      
   Note: Content may be edited for style and length.   
      
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Journal Reference:   
      1. Wolfgang Fink, Connor Fuhrman, Andres Nuncio Zuniga, Mark Tarbell. A   
         Hansel & Gretel Breadcrumb-Style Dynamically Deployed Communication   
         Network Paradigm using Mesh Topology for Planetary Subsurface   
         Exploration. Advances in Space Research, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/   
         j.asr.2023.02.012   
   ==========================================================================   
      
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230301185225.htm   
      
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