The Yeti Robot, Currently Inspecting The South Pole

At this time there are several people doing research on the South Pole. And so naturally they need a way to check for dangers, dangerous crevices in the ice for example. This is it, the simpler than you may think ‘Yeti’ robot.

“It’s simple and inexpensive, yet effective,” said Laura Ray, an engineer at Dartmouth College and Yeti project leader.

“On a $20,000 budget, designing from the ground up, undergraduates designed [and] fabricated a very reliable robot.”

A new study, published in the March/April issue of the Journal of Field Robotics, found that Yeti operated reliably at temperatures of -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius), moved well over uneven snow, and acquired data on hundreds of crevasse encounters—which will help scientists identify where crevasses are, according to the authors.

The 160-pound (73-kilogram) robot is also lightweight enough that it can travel across crevasse bridges without falling in, said Ray.

So far Yeti’s been deployed on 12 projects, including one at the South Pole, where the robot discovered three buried buildings that could have been hazardous for people working in the area.

We have robots exploring Mars like It’s no big deal, but the truth is many corners of our planet are still quite unexplored. Why don’t we see exploration rovers on earth too?