JPL Develops Six-Legged ATHLETE Robot

When your office environment is genuinely filled with people who are rocket scientists, chances are that you’re bound to come up a bright idea or two. Such is the case with JPL’s ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) robot, which was developed by JPL with the help of Boeing, Stanford University, and NASA’s Johnson and Ames Centers. According to the NASA ATHLETE project page, JPL has been hard at work on a new autonomous robotic vehicle concept that combines six legs (capped with wheels) that each feature six degrees of freedom (DOF).
The current version has a paylod capacity of 450 kg, but future variants will be larger and more capable. JPL hopes that robotic vehicles developed under the ATHLETE project will eventually be able to cross most terrain types, have a 10-year life cycle (under hostile conditions), and “Demonstrate a useful ‘voice and gesture’ command mode to enable suited astronauts to interact with these vehicles.”