With its adorable stereo-camera eyes, the Lightweight Rover Unit 1 (LRU1) robot, posing on the black gravel of Italy’s Mount Etna, resembles PIXAR’s famous animated character WALL-E. LRU1 is one of a team of eye-catching robots designed by Germany’s engineers that have recently completed a test run on the moon-like slopes of Europe’s most active volcano.
The robots, developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), spent the last week of June demonstrating their ability to move around and navigate the challenging landscape with minimal human guidance.
LRU1, the robotic team’s scientist, analyzed the moon-like soil with its cameras, assisted by its “brother”, the Lightweight Rover Unit 2 (LRU2). LRU2, equipped with a robotic arm and hand, can grasp baseball-sized rocks and provide tactile feedback, virtually allowing the scientists to remotely “feel” the lunar stones. The rover can also determine the chemical composition of the collected samples using its laser spectroscope, an instrument that shines a laser beam onto a surface and detects how the surface scatters the light back. A drone called ARDEA guided LRU1 and LRU2 during their endeavor, flying ahead of the two and mapping the surrounding terrain.
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