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Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamedback invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However,these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such ascliffs, canyons and crater walls that contain exposed rock-faces and aregeological time-capsules into the early Moon and Mars. We have proposed theSphereX robot with a mass of 3 kg, 30 cm diameter that can hop, roll and flyshort distances. A single robot may slip and fall, however, a multirobot systemcan work cooperatively by being interlinked using spring-tethers and work muchlike a team of mountaineers to systematically climb a slope. We consider a teamof four or more robots that are interlinked with tethers in an 'x'configuration. Each robot secures itself to a slope using spiny grippingactuators, and one by one each robot moves upwards by crawling, rolling orhopping up the slope. In this paper, we present a human devised autonomousclimbing algorithm and evaluate it using a high-fidelity dynamics simulator.The climbing surfaces contain impassable obstacles and some loosely held rocksthat can dislodge. Under these conditions, the robots need to autonomously map,plan and navigate up or down these steep environments. Autonomous mapping andnavigation capability is evaluated using simulated lasers, vision sensors. Thehuman devised planning algorithm uses a new algorithm called bounded-leg A*.Our early simulation results show much promise in these techniques and ourfuture plans include demonstration on real robots in a controlled laboratoryenvironment and outdoors in the canyons of Arizona.

Planning and Navigation of Climbing Robots in Low-Gravity Environments