NASA's Volcanic Robo-Spiders: Sentinels of Future Eruptions

NASA has deployed a swarm of robo-spiders to stand guard over an active volcano. Possibly in preparation for appearing on a huge screen in the White House and demanding one hundred billion dollars (in funding for space science). But this isn't Bond villain posturing, it's an effort to save lives and learn about extraterrestrial environments at the same time. They couldn't be more awesomely humanitarian if they were the Thunderbirds.

Fifteen spiderbots were deployed in and around Mt. Saint Helens, arming the area with early seismographic warning of any future eruptions. Instead of expensive permanent installations, or having to send people to look at things (which can cause delays precisely when rapid reactions are paramount), the cheap robots can stay permanently on station - and signal for help if they detect anything interesting. And by "help" we mean that the spiderbot-network is connected to the Earth Observing satellite EO-1 and can call down high-level analysis whenever it's needed.

The volcanic crater is a great testing ground for hostile off-world environments and the robo-swarm is an example of a new approach in exploration. Instead of building one great big probe, and losing everything if anything goes wrong, instead you send a horde of simpler robots. They can work wirelessly, co-operating to cover a far larger area than any single probe, and if a few get busted, broken or blown up it really doesn't matter.

The idea is applicable to other potential disaster sites around the world. Adapted spiderbots, customised to different detection jobs (and that would only mean swapping out one or two of the sensor packages) can keep a permanent watch on major hot spots - and let us react more rapidly than ever before.

Luke McKinney

NASA goes inside a volcano http://www.physorg.com/news168874991.html