NASA's new foldable robot PUFFER or Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot is only as small as a person's hand. It can fold its wheels and tuck itself like an origami.
PUFFER can also drop into crevices and craters in Mars. Also, it can climb sharp slopes and travel 2,050 feet with only one battery charge. NASA has tested this foldable robot for over a year into different surfaces and situations. PUFFER has been tested in a range of rugged terrains, from the Mojave Desert in California to the snowy hills of Antarctica, reported NASA. This origami-like robot is tested to such circumstances to be the companion of the rover that will go to Mars.
It will be the one who will go to the risky and dangerous places that the huge rover cannot go to. Several of PUFFER are made so they can help each other and can cover a larger place in Mars. It will also be the eyes of the SUV-sized rover on Mars before facing the unexplored red planet, stated Computer World. "They can do parallel science with a rover, so you can increase the amount you're doing in a day," said Jaakko Karras, PUFFER's project manager at JPL. "We can see these being used in hard-to-reach locations - squeezing under ledges, for example."
The PUFFER is designed from an origami. It was created by Karras, a graduate student at UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystem Lab. He tried working on making robot with the likeness of the animal and insect movements and based it in the animal's natural forms.
Other scientists are saying that it could not only be used in space but here on Earth too. The foldable robot, PUFFER, will be really helpful with exploring volcanoes, said Carolyn Parcheta, a JPL scientist who uses robots to explore volcanoes. She is interested in the origami-like robot and wants to try it using for other fields like geology. This hand-size robot is really smart and very useful as it can be brought anywhere and anytime, Parcheta added.
