Our Project
We are a team of 10 engineering students brought together through an ETH Focus Project. Our goal is to develop a highly resilient robot engineered for impact absorption and exploration in extreme environments. Designed to withstand impacts from significant heights, the robot will safeguard its onboard electronics and remain fully operational. Once on the ground, it will use an advanced jumping locomotion system, paired with Time-of-Flight cameras, to navigate and explore possibly unknown and challenging terrains with precision and reliability.
Mission Overview
Meet our Prototypes!
Prototype I - Drop
Prototype I - Jumping
Prototype II
Final Prototype
Coming soon...
Special Focus: Prototype II
Key Technologies
Custom PCB
To fit the specific demands of our robot a custom, double-sided, 4-layer PCB was designed. It includes a Pi CM5 compute module and features an IMU for state estimation, interfaces for the actuators, power conversion and multiple USB hubs. An external stiffening frame supports the PCB during the high accelerations of the impact.
Controls
The control software takes the state estimation and perception as input and guides the robot to its desired location.
Tensile Load System
This system takes the tensile loads occuring at impact. Using metal ropes and tightening systems, we can manually adjust the stiffness of the cage at any time.
Jumping Actuation Mechanism
This mechanism winds up the rope to displace the core inside the cage. When the desired core position is reached, the rope is released instantly. The energy stored in the deflected springs gets transferred into the acceleration of the core, resulting in a controlled jumping motion.
Impacting
Space Exploration
Impacting
In the future, our robot could serve as a vital platform for cave exploration on planets and moons, where the absence of an atmosphere makes flying robots impractical. Its ability to survive significant falls allows for simple deployment by being dropped directly from a landing vehicle thereby reducing mission complexity and improving operational efficiency. This versatility could open new possibilities for autonomous exploration in challenging, hard-to-reach environments such as lunar lava tubes, which have never been explored.