The Current Status of The Development of Adaptive Robots for The Complex Lunar Terrain

Abstract

The lunar exploration is expanding to extreme terrains. Traditional wheeled platforms have insufficient terrain adaptability and thus there is an urgent need to develop adaptive robots. This article reviews the current status of adaptive robot technologies for complex lunar terrains. In the motion system, the technological evolution from wheeled platforms to leg-footed, wheeled-leg hybrid, bouncing crawling, etc., is summarized. Representative achievements such as single-motor self-locking design, flexible spine of multi-toe quadruped robots, and six-link leg gait strategies are summarized. In the perception system, the key technological progress in visual sensing, including geographic space technology and synthetic image generation methods, body state perception, and test methods for extreme environment protection, is analyzed. The research shows that the bionic multi-modal configuration significantly improves the ability to pass through extreme terrains, and the fusion of multiple sensors promotes the transition of robots from environmental observation to autonomous understanding. However, the technology still faces challenges such as reliability in extreme environments and energy and computing power constraints. In the future, new materials, group collaboration, and the integration of artificial intelligence will drive the lunar robots to evolve into autonomous intelligent agents.