Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments (LASSIE)
LASSIE integrates legged robot mobility, proprioceptive sensing, and human-robot collaborative reasoning, to create next-generation environment-aware, discovery-driven platforms that can make every step a scientific experiment.
There are three main objectives in the LASSIE project
Technology
The Technology objective is to develop multi-legged robots that can “feel” and interpret surface force responses via leg-terrain interactions, to enable adaptive sampling and high mobility on extreme earth and planetary surfaces.
Science
The Science objective is to utilize the robotic-aided adaptive sampling to determine how the friction and erodibility of regolith admixtures is altered by gradients in surface crusts and lags, and ice content.
Operation
The Operations objective is to create cognitively-inspired algorithms that allow robots to participate in the data decision process with human scientists to interpret observations and dynamically adjust exploration plans.
LASSIE extends current planetary sampling operations by allowing rapid evaluation of a wider range of planetary-relevant environmental gradients, including loose unconsolidated materials, soil crusts and surface lags, lithified sediments, and icy sediment mixtures. LASSIE couples this greater breadth of sampling opportunities with a shared autonomy framework for sampling decisions that enables robots to assist human teammates with decisions of where to collect data and how much to collect, thereby optimizing astronaut time available for science activities. The LASSIE approach is therefore well-aligned with NASA's Moon-to-Mars objectives to use robotic techniques to survey sites and conduct measurements, and develop integrated human-robot systems that enable maximum science return, for the advancement of geologic understanding of planetary bodies.