LEMUR (Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot) is a rover developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Unlike previous rovers, LEMUR is able to climb cliffs and climb walls and access hitherto unattainable places, which could allow it to better explore other planets. By using its four limbs, each of which has 16 fingers with hundreds of tiny hooks and artificial intelligence to find its way around the obstacles, LEMUR can get where no other rover can.
Hybrid wheels, with an adhesion that mimics that of geckos, use an electric charge to cling to the walls (the same phenomenon causes your hair to adhere to a balloon after rubbing it on the head). As you can see in the following video, his last field test took place at the beginning of 2019 in Death Valley, California, an old seabed.
Just as astronauts train underwater for spacewalks, the technology created for ocean exploration can be a good prototype for missions to places with almost zero gravity. The underwater clamp is one of LEMUR’s hands, with the same 16 fingers and 250 hooks to grip irregular surfaces. One day it could be sent for operations on an asteroid or another small body in the solar system. For now, it is connected to the Nautilus submarine research ship operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust on the Hawaiian coast, where it helps take samples of the deep oceans from more than a mile below the surface.
