Shape-shifting robot developed to help astronauts

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Shape-shifting robot developed to help astronauts
The next few decades will be spent in manned space travel. The future with missions to the Moon and long-term projects will be shaped by the presence of humans in space. Bases and physical activities to be established on the Moon pose a certain risk. For this, the scientific world has been working on robots that will help people in space for a while.

Developed an origami-style robot

In the not-too-distant future, astronauts to the Moon may be accompanied by shape-shifting robots called Mori Modular Robot for Space, or Mori3 for short. The team from the EPFL School of Engineering announced that the new research has been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, and that the idea behind Mori3 is to create a shape-shifting robot that can be easily assembled for specific functions. The origami-like robot consists of individual triangular modules that can be put together to form polygons of various sizes.
Thanks to this modular structure, the robot can be sent to the Moon easily. According to the announcement, Mori3 robots can fulfill three requirements for a Moon robot; the ability to move around, hold and carry objects, and interact with people. While the researchers behind Mori3 acknowledge that robots designed for specific missions will be much more efficient, they hope Mori3’s versatility will make it an attractive option, especially for astronauts who need to complete missions in tight and sometimes cramped spaces.

Jamie Paik, the leader of the researchers who created Mori3, stated in his statement that the platform they developed can be used to create costly structures. According to Paik, a general-purpose robot like Mori3 will be less effective than specialized robots, but this versatility is the point of Mori3. The researchers hope that the Mori3 robots will be used for communication and external repairs.