Scientists are testing a quadrupedal robot, named Spirit, in the rugged terrain of Oregon's Mount Hood, simulating the extreme conditions of the Moon and Mars.

The idea is to teach robots how to cope with difficult and changing ground in the same way we can, walking from hard or rocky surfaces, known as regolith, or soft ground like snow or sand.

“When we walk on uneven surfaces as humans, we can sort of detect how the ground is shifting beneath our feet, a legged-robot is capable of the exact same thing,” said Dr Cristina Wilson, a cognitive scientist at Oregon State University.

The research, called the LASSIE Project: Legged Autonomous Surface Science in Analog Environments, saw Spirit learning to navigate and adapt to each new challenge as we prepare for future missions with people and robots working together in space.

"What the LASSIE project is doing is really looking forward to that time and considering how should humans and robots collaborate for exploration of planets particularly where should they go to collect data?," Wilson said.

The robot’s efforts on Mount Hood will help design future machines and how they cope with differing terrains and how they gather data as they move.

“We're doing a very novel thing to turn each leg of the robot into a soil or regolith sensor so that when the robot is running around every step we want the robot to be gathering information about the environment," said Feifei Qian, Assistant Professor at University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering.

Qian’s group doesn’t intend to stop at just one robot and has a two-year $2 million grant to help NASA put teams of robots working together on the same tasks on the moon.

The LASSIE team comprised of experts from NASA, Texas A&M University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oregon State University, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

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(Production: Stuart McDill)