We bring you news of future dogs digging on Mars — robotic dogs, that is. 

In the past two years, we’ve learned that digging on Mars is not an easy task. The InSight Mission has tried extremely hard and failed spectacularly. Now, as we look to the future, planetary scientists are taking lessons from the agile robot dogs, cheetahs, and other critters being created by Boston Dynamics. 

Currently, one of these robot dogs can be found at CalTech being put through its paces. It is hoped that one of these dogs, dubbed “Autonomous Spot” or Au-Spot, will be able to descend through steep cave entrances and even dig. These robots can travel at 5 km/h which is 38 times faster than Curiosity and would allow them to cover in one hour a distance greater than what Curiosity explored all last year.

At this point, they are still at the robot training stage, and they are using artificial intelligence to help them learn how to handle different kinds of obstacles and adapt to new problems. There is a long way to go before one of these robots will be ready to travel to the red planet, but I for one welcome our new robot Rovers and look forward to Spot digging up Mars.

More Information

Eos article