NASA has plans to send smartphone-sized swimming robots: The concept and more – Times of India

Imagine a group of cellphone-size robots swimming through the water beneath the thick icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus, looking for signs of alien life. That’s the vision of Ethan Schaler, a robotics mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The US space organisation recently awarded Schaler $600,000 to for his Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers (SWIM) concept under its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.
The funding is for a study to check the feasibility of sending swarms of miniature swimming robots (known as independent micro-swimmers) to explore oceans beneath the icy shells of our Solar System’s many “ocean worlds”. “My idea is, where can we take miniaturised robotics and apply them in interesting new ways for exploring our solar system?” Schaler said. “With a swarm of small swimming robots, we are able to explore a much larger volume of ocean water and improve our measurements by having multiple robots collecting data in the same area.”
What the concept looks like
The early-stage SWIM concept, as per NASA, envisions wedge-shaped robots, each about 5 inches (12 centimetres) long and about 3 to 5 cubic inches (60 to 75 cubic centimetres) in volume. About four dozen of them could fit in a 4-inch-long (10-centimetre-long) section of a cryobot 10 inches (25 centimetres) in diameter, taking up just about 15% of the science payload volume. For those unaware, a cryobot is a robot that can penetrate water and ice. It is a robot device used for the exploration of masses of ice or areas trapped under ice, as of polar regions on Earth.
As ambitious as the SWIM concept is, its intent would be to reduce risk while enhancing science. The cryobot would be connected via a communications tether to the surface-based lander, which would in turn be the point of contact with mission controllers on Earth. That tethered approach, along with limited space to include a large propulsion system, means the cryobot would likely be unable to venture much beyond the point where ice meets ocean.
‘Behave’ like fishes
The report adds that these SWIM robots could “flock” together in a behaviour inspired by fish or birds, thereby reducing errors in data through their overlapping measurements.
Each robot would have its own propulsion system, onboard computer, and ultrasound communications system, along with simple sensors for temperature, salinity, acidity, and pressure. Chemical sensors to monitor for biomarkers – signs of life – will be part of Schaler’s Phase II study.