SunSpiral and his colleagues have received a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts award to see if they can get these structures to move and perform the tasks that are needed for space exploration. He is now a principal investigator of the Dynamic Tensegrity Robotics Lab at NASA Ames Research Center, and several collaborators, like Agogino’s lab at Berkeley have joined the research.

“How science really happens is that you get teams together, you build collaborations, you build networks of colleagues who are thinking about similar parts of the problem but may be taking slightly different approaches to it… and you work with each other and you share ideas,” adds SunSpiral.

There’s a lot involved in designing one of these robots. In general, computers control motors that cause the cables to stretch or compress. This causes the structure to shift its shape, altering the center of gravity and creating a rolling motion. The eventual idea is that these robots could carry instruments, like cameras and sensors. Several robots could be compactly packed into a space craft and dropped on a planet where they could roll around taking images and gathering data.

Another p — One of the tensegrity robot prototypes developed at Alice Agogino's lab. This one has a centralized computer and uses linear actuators to expand and compress the cables to get the robots to move.

Agogino’s lab at Berkeley has created several rapid prototypes of the tensegrity structures. For each prototype they change parameters like the materials they are making the robots out of and the types and locations of the motors. For example, one version uses motors that stretches and compresses the cables by pulling or pushing on a straight line, while another version actually wraps the cable around a spool to shorten it.

This is the most recent tensegrity robot prototype created by Alice Agogino's lab. The computers and motors that control movement are located in the pods.

Once the prototypes are built they test for things like how fast they go, how much energy they need to move, how much weight they can carry, how far they can be dropped, and how they respond to different environments. In additional to building physical prototypes, the teams are also exploring how to best program the robots to move using NASA’s Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit (NTRT). They also use computer simulations to build computer models of these robots.

An actual space mission with these robots is still a long way off. But the researchers are looking at other uses for tensegrity robotics as well. For example, they are examining how tensegrity robots could be used in home healthcare. Her lab is also developing educational toys and robots to help teach students about tensegrity and robotics.

“We’re exploring just the wide range of motions that we can get out of tensegrities. Can they eventually climb up stairs for home health care – that's one thing that we’re really interested in. So we’re really interested exploring the limit of what you can do with this kind of structure,” explains Alice Agogino. Tensegrity robots could offer exciting new possibilities in the world of robotics.

News Daily Newsletter

The Bay

Emma’s Must-Sees

Videos from KQED Live

Donor-Advised Funds

Vytas SunSpiralVytas SunSpiral

Exploring Space with Shape-Shifting Robots