Researchers building RoboBalls to explore other planets

By Dean Murray

Researchers are working on a swarm of RoboBalls to send to other planets.

The spherical robots would be deployed to map alien landscapes by rolling around challenging terrain.

The concept was first conceived by Dr. Robert Ambrose while working at NASA in 2003.

After joining Texas A&M University in 2021, he reignited the idea and now a small team is working to make RoboBall fit for outer space use.

Two versions exist: the smaller RoboBall II prototype with a diameter of 2 feet, and the RoboBall III, which is 6 feet across and built with plans to carry payloads such as sensors, cameras or sampling tools for real-world missions.

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Driven by graduate students Rishi Jangale and Derek Pravecek, long-term goals include autonomous navigation and remote deployment.

The team hopes to see RoboBall dispatched from a lunar lander to chart steep crater walls or launched from an unmanned drone to survey post-disaster landscapes on Earth.

Each ball could map terrain, transmit data back to operators, and even deploy instruments in hard-to-reach spots.

Rishi Jangale said, "Imagine a swarm of these balls deployed after a hurricane. They could map flooded areas, find survivors and bring back essential data — all without risking human lives."

Upcoming tests will continue to take RoboBall into outdoor environments, with the Robotics and Automation Design (RAD) Lab researchers planning field trials on Texas beaches to demonstrate a water-to-land transition and test the robot’s buoyancy and terrain adaptability in a real-world setting.

Rishi Jangale added, "Traditional vehicles stall or tip over in abrupt transitions. This robot can roll out of water onto sand without worrying about orientation.

"It’s going where other robots can’t."