October 31, 2001

2 min read

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NASA Engineers Develop Bulldozer Rover for Use on Mars

By Kate Wong

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Image: NASA/JPL

A fleet of pint-size bulldozers may one day do the dirty work on Mars, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory report. Needless to say, they are a far cry from the Fisher-Price variety. Lightweight, solar-powered and intelligent, these robotic vehicles could aid in the search for life on the Red Planet or help support a human presence there.

"If water sources, such as hot springs, layers of ice or groundwater reservoirs are discovered on Mars, a network of these rovers could conduct scientific investigations and excavate the site piece by piece, just as humans would on an archaeological dig," JPL robotics engineer Brian Wilcox explains. "Rovers like these may also play a role in establishing a space outpost for eventual human occupancy. They may be used to create buried habitats or utility trenches and to excavate resources to support life."

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Part bulldozer and part dump truck, each eight-pound rover has arms that carry a tiny scoop to a bucket overhead (see image). Equipped with the same processor and software as a nanorover originally designed for a Japanese asteroid mission, the bulldozer rovers would work in groups coordinated by a central control tower. "We think a greater amount of terrain can be excavated if the workload is shared among several smaller vehicles," Wilcox comments. "Smaller, solar-powered vehicles have a higher power-to-weight ratio than bigger vehicles, yet together perform the same tasks as a large vehicle."

So far, four working prototypes of the bulldozer rovers exist, and developers are working to determine which size best suits excavation tasks. "When people hear about the work we do, they sometimes think we are just talking science fiction," JPL scientist Wayne Schober remarks, noting that in fact, he and his colleagues have developed a number of sophisticated robots used on various space missions. "We are not all fun and games. We mean business."

Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

More by Kate Wong

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