1985 – Nuclear Inspection Robot "AMOOTY" climbing stairs in a mock-up of a nuclear power plant. Before AMOOTY there was MOOTY. No manipulator arm here, just vision and star-wheel propulsion. Text Source: Inside The Robot Kingdom, Frederik L. Schodt, 1988 If cleverly designed, a robot on modified wheels or tank treads can still have considerable …
Manned/Unmanned Lunar Explorer (MULE) Another Dual-Mode (Manned/Unmanned) LRV for Post-Apollo missions. This one with manipluator arms. Courtesy of one of NASAs system engineering courses. Source: here. See other early Space Teleoperators here. See other early Lunar Robots here.
Hughes Space Mobot concept. John W. Clark, Ph.D. NUCLEAR ELECTRONICS LABORATORY HUGHES AIRCRAFT COMPANY CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA ROLE OF REMOTE HANDLING IN SPACE [c1962] Orbiting Vehicles In connection with orbiting vehicles, remote-handling techniques can advantageously be employed in connection with maintenance and repair, assembly in orbit, and personnel transfer. Maintenance and repair is, of cause, …
MACHINE TO EXPLORE MOON FIRST EXPLORER of the moon may be a machine. Roaming the crust, it would collect samples of rocks and dust with mechanical fingers, under remote control of spacemen remaining safely within a landed rocket ship. Hughes Aircraft company designers say it could be patterned closely after their Mobot, a mobile mechanical …
CMU Rover (showing camera slide). The CMU rover wheel drive assembly (simplified cross section). CMU Rover base assembly (showing wheels). Basic robotics concepts – John M. Holland – 1983 The CMU Rover Fully Independent Drive At the time of this writing [1983] Dr. Hans Moravec at Carnegie-Mellon University is constructing a new mobile robotic …