If you’re old enough to remember the TV show “Lassie,” you may be in for a shock when you see the modern version of the canine namesake. Today’s LASSIE, short for Legged Autonomous Surface Science in Analog Environments, isn’t rescuing Timmy from a well; it’s preparing for the next generation of robots that will “walk” on planetary surfaces such as that of the moon or Mars.
The LASSIE project is a huge ongoing endeavor tackled by researchers at Texas A&M University, the University of Southern California, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oregon State University, Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania and NASA Johnson Space Center.
Research at this scale requires collaboration not only among universities and agencies but also across various disciplines. For the LASSIE test robot, the research team includes engineers, cognitive scientists, geoscientists and planetary scientists, as well as undergraduate and graduate students.
“Space exploration is intrinsically a multidisciplinary problem, and it requires people from all different disciplines — from science, engineering, construction, behavioral science — and this project is integrating all of those,” said Dr. Ryan Ewing, Johnson Space Center geologist and former Texas A&M geology and geophysics professor.
Dr. Marion Nachon, an associate research scientist and lecturer in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Texas A&M, is a co-investigator for the three-year project.
Nachon, who originally came to Texas A&M in 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher, has more than a decade of expertise working with NASA Mars rover missions — first, Curiosity, and currently, Perseverance.
As we prepare for future space missions that will likely include teams of both humans and robots working together to explore diverse planetary surfaces, we want these robots to efficiently complement scientists’ work and to be able to explore potentially challenging landscapes and terrains.
Her work with Mars rovers focuses on analyzing the composition of the red planet’s surface to better understand its geologic history. In addition, she has been involved with rover “operations,” or the daily decision-making aspect of what terrains and rocks to explore and analyze on Mars.
“Currently, most of the exploration of our solar system is carried out via satellites and a few rovers, while scientists and engineers remain on Earth,” Nachon said. “As we prepare for future space missions that will likely include teams of both humans and robots working together to explore diverse planetary surfaces, we want these robots to efficiently complement scientists’ work and to be able to explore potentially challenging landscapes and terrains. Human-robot collaboration and robot locomotion are key aspects of the research performed by the LASSIE team.”
To put the LASSIE robot to the test, the team — which included a real canine named Howard for inspiration — headed to the Palmer Glacier on Oregon’s Mt. Hood in the summer of 2024. Mt. Hood stood in for the moon on a field test for the robot, and researchers hoped to learn how it would handle the rough and varied surfaces on the glacier and how the researchers could adapt its gait when needed to better handle the rough surface.
Four-legged robots like the LASSIE robot can go where the wheels on a rover can’t, such as up steep inclines and into more sandy and bouldery terrains. But first, the robot needs to be tested to see how these legs perform. And so, the research team and Howard trekked 6,000 feet up a snow-capped mountain, located about 70 miles east of Portland, to see what their test robot could do.
The LASSIE test robot covered a variety of challenging terrains, using its spindly metal legs to amble over, across and around shifting dirt, slushy snow and boulders during five days of testing. Sometimes, the robot expertly traversed the hillside, while at other moments, teetered and fell over — all part of the trial-and-error process to better understand the substrate properties and learn to walk better on these extreme terrains. The practice time the robot logged produced data that will be used to train future robots to walk on and explore other planetary bodies in our solar system, like Earth’s moon.
A legged robot needs to be able to detect what is happening when it interacts with the ground underneath and rapidly adjust its locomotion strategies accordingly.
“A legged robot needs to be able to detect what is happening when it interacts with the ground underneath and rapidly adjust its locomotion strategies accordingly,” said Dr. Feifei Qian, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and School of Advanced Computing, who is leading the LASSIE project funded by NASA. “When the robot leg slips on ice or sinks into soft snow, it inspires us to look for new principles and strategies that can push the boundary of human knowledge and enable new technology. We learn and improve from the observed failures.”
The goal of this research project is to create and test next-generation, high-mobility walking, or “legged,” robots capable of agilely moving through a variety of challenging terrains, including icy surfaces, crusted sand and rocky terrain, to flexibly support and enhance future scientific exploration of planetary environments.
