Beijing: Chinese researchers are testing and training robotic dogs in preparation for future exploration beneath the moon’s surface, an area that is considered ideal for establishing human lunar bases, South China Morning Post reported.
According to Emirates News Agency, a team from Peking University’s school of computer science has developed two specialised robotic dogs for the exploration mission and tested them in a cave in northeastern China. Created by lava flows and located in a forest region near Jingbo Lake near the city of Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang province, the cave is ‘strikingly similar’ to the lunar underground environment, according to the university post.
There, some sections suddenly narrow to a point that is impassable for research personnel, so the robotic dogs are deployed as ‘scouts’ to reliably execute surveying tasks that the humans cannot easily accomplish. Testing their performance in a ‘lunar-like lava tube environment’ enabled researchers to advance the embodied intelligence technologies used in deep-space exploration, said Zhang Shanghang, a researcher at the university and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a non-profit AI research laboratory also known as Zhiyuan Institute.
Zhang, who led the development of the two customised robotic dogs, said these models could navigate autonomously, avoid obstacles, create maps, and record high-precision 3D structures within caves. Equipped with a lidar remote-sensing technology, the robots provided reliable spatial data for scientific research, he added.
One prototype draws inspiration from anteaters, a mammal that has evolved powerful forearms for digging. The device features a unique design combining a flexible robotic arm with a rigid mobile platform to focus on autonomous exploration and multifunctional operations in complex environments.
Another Peking University scientist said the institution’s ultimate goal was to independently develop a deep-space exploration robot capable of undertaking future missions to celestial bodies such as the moon and Mars. Advancing understanding of the underground lunar landscape with robots holds significant implications for using the moon in the future.