The proposal comes from a Japanese start-up, Gitai, in response to the projects of billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who, with their companies SpaceX and Blue Origin, propose to democratize travel to space.
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Safer and much cheaper. With its project to send armies of robot-builders to habitable satellites or planets, the start-up Gitai, founded in Tokyo in 2016, thinks it can divide by 100 the price of construction work on the Moon, Mars or the next planets where humans will want to venture.
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His idea is to invent ultra-versatile robots, capable of creating the conditions for the arrival of humans on hostile terrain in space. First advantage: we avoid endangering astronauts who in any case can only work a few hours a day in trying conditions.
These space workers are resistant to extreme temperatures and radiation
Gitai’s robots are designed with technologies used on Earth, especially in factories, but their particularity is that they are able to work even in atmospheres or in the face of very hostile temperatures. For example, they are tested to over 75 degrees or minus 40 degrees and hold up very well when bombarded with radiation.
Gitai engineers are developing two machines. The first is a rover that looks a bit like a centaur or a praying mantis, it’s up to you. The upper body is that of a humanoid robot with two articulated arms and hands and a head equipped with cameras. And a kind of torso is installed on four legs equipped with four-wheel drive. He is almost 1.50m tall and he can move in the sand, on the rocks, even if there is a little unevenness. It has been tested several times in the desert.
Conclusive tests
Completely remote controlled, it can make simple constructions. The engineer remaining on Earth, or in a shuttle in orbit around the Moon, can remote control him to make him assemble solar panels, have him do welding on a new life base or have him mount a telecommunications antenna. And this rover works with a caterpillar robot that turns into an articulated arm to also work remotely on the assembly of components.
These space workers are realistic and are likely to be deployed on exploration missions. The caterpillar robot was already tested last year inside the International Space Station (ISS). And this fall, he will be deployed outside the station to work on one of the module’s airlocks (the Bishop airlock) which allows the deployment of minisatellites. As for the “praying mantis” robot, Gitai hopes to be able to demonstrate its effectiveness live from the Moon in 2025.