How Do Robots Explore Caves That Are Too Narrow for People?

More fun facts

• NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory built a team of robots to explore tunnels, caves and other places underground.
• The team, called CoSTAR, used wheeled rovers, tank-like robots with treads, flying drones and climbing robots.
• Some climbing robots rise on treads shaped like pinball flippers to get over obstacles.
• In a 2019 contest run by DARPA, no humans were allowed in the tunnels, so the robots had to work on their own.
• The CoSTAR team won second place after finding objects hidden hundreds of feet underground.
• GPS does not work deep underground, so cave robots build their own 3D maps as they go.
• Their navigation is built to handle dark, dust, smoke and fog.

Sources: NASA, NASA