 Dante II, an eight-legged walking machine, is shown here during field trials, with its actions sped up. Named for a 14th century Italian poet, this 20th century robot has been designed to withstand and report on its journey to the floor of a volcano. NASA sponsored the team from Carnegie Mellon University to build Dante, a robot designed to withstand Earth's harshest conditions. Its goal? Prove out technology to explore distant planets. Remotely controlled from 80 miles away, the robot was able to explore the inner depths of a lengthy volcano at Mount Spur, Alaska. David Lavery, his manager of NASA's Color Robotics program. The fundamental purpose that our program is interested in is the robotics technology itself and the ability of a robotic instrument to go and do this type of mission in a harsh, unstructured environment that can deliver a science payload to the interior of the volcano. Information from Dante's onboard video cameras and sensors was relayed via satellite to scientists in Anchorage, 80 miles away. From their remote location, controllers used a computer-generated image created by a laser scanner to track its movement. Having accomplished one short-term goal with the successful descent into Mount Spur, the robot team hopes to apply the lessons learned to NASA's long-term plans for the future. Our hope is that a lot of that will find its way into future planetary missions. That's obviously where NASA's interest lies, is we want to take this and move it out to the surface of other heavenly bodies, the moon, Mars, and other planets. Dante II, an eight-legged walking machine, is shown here during field trials with its actions sped up. Named for a 14th-century Italian poet, this 20th-century robot has been designed to withstand and record on its journey to the floor of a volcano. NASA sponsored a team from Carnegie Mellon University to build Dante, a robot designed to withstand Earth's harshest conditions. Its goal, prove-out technology to explore distant planets. Remotely controlled from 80 miles away, the robot was able to investigate the inner depths of an active volcano at Mount Spur, Alaska. There is an open pit of steaming vents, surrounded by sheer walls of fractured rock. There's everything from pebbles to car-sized boulders rolling down all day long. We tried to pick a descent course that would protect, insulate the machine from most of the rockfall. John Bear's heads, the CMUT. With help from the Alaska National Guard, Dante was pairly put safely to the crater rig. Mount Spur's crater erupted in 1992. One of the robot's functions was to measure levels of volcanic gases. This information gives Mike Dukas of the Alaska Volcano Observatory an idea of how active the crater might be. It has gas sensors on board. It has a sulfurous sensor, a carbon dioxide sensor. And so that's going to give us a real close-in view and sampling of what the fumaroles are made up of. In the past few years, 11 scientists have perished while working near active volcanoes. This danger makes robots an obvious alternative. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, the person standing next to you will die and you won't. And so it's a matter of, you have to ask that question, why are you going into that zone? Is it necessary for you to go into that zone? Can you do that same measurement from a safer position? Because of the ever-present danger of an explosion, scientists monitored seismic activity and kept constant radio contact with the team on the crater rim. In 1993, the first Dante robot attempted to explore Mount Erebus in Antarctica. When its fiber-optic communications cable snapped, the mission was cut short. But according to CMU's John Bears, the mission taught them some valuable lessons. We looked at the experience from Dante 1, which taught us an awful lot about what would work, what wouldn't work, what was appropriate for the environment, what was appropriate for the terrain, what was appropriate to take on in a year. And then we came here and looked at the volcano. To improve its systems, major design changes had to be made quickly to keep the project on schedule. It was done with the help of experts in laser technology, telecommunications, computer software and mechanical engineering. After power was supplied to the robot from a generator and all communications links were set, Dante was ready. Heading, I think we're ready to scan up and try stroking and turning. The eight-legged craft began its assault on the crater. We're at 90 meters. Special rubber snowshoes helped it traverse the first snow field. Ultimately, Dante spent three and one-half days traversing the nearly 700 feet down to the crater floor, an area covered with boulders. Information from on-board video cameras and sensors was relayed via satellite to scientists in Anchorage. From their remote location, controllers used a computer-generated image created by a laser scanner to track its movement. In addition, they had a computer display that was in effect the robot's dashboard that gave them information and feedback from all the on-board sensor systems, told them when the legs were in contact with the ground, what angle the legs were positioned at, what attitude the body had with respect to gravity in the ground. That sort of information. David Lavery is manager of NASA's Telerobotics program. Dante also incorporates virtual reality technology developed at NASA Ames Research Center. The system gives the user a feeling of being there. What it is, is a pair of cameras that are set at the human ocular distance, roughly that, and then those cameras, frames from those images, are sequenced back at the operator station using a special monitor and a special glasses so that the human is able to perceive some depth. This same technology has been tested in a number of applications by NASA. Martian rover prototypes and underwater explorers have been operated remotely using 3D visual displays and specially censored gloves. Artificial intelligence allowed Dante to navigate on its own. A lot of what we learned had to do with how much autonomy can be used on board a robot given our current level of technology to navigate through the extremely rugged terrains that we saw inside the crater. We had a capability for at least half of the descent to basically turn on all of the onboard intelligence on the robot and let it do its own thing. Although the extremely treacherous terrain impeded Dante's climb from the crater, all science and technology objectives were completed, indicating that the crater will probably remain inactive. It proved that exploring dangerous terrain was possible using unaided robotic technology. It's becoming almost like a life goal. Every single person who got involved in both projects has made their decisions to try to make something happen and make it known to the outside world. Having accomplished one short-term goal with the successful descent into Mount Spur, the robot team hopes to apply the lessons learned to NASA's long-term plans for the future. Our hope is that a lot of that will find its way into future planetary missions. That's obviously where NASA's interest lies, is we want to take this and move it out to the surface of other heavenly bodies, the moon, Mars, and other planets. In addition, they had a computer display that was in effect the robot's dashboard that gave them information and feedback from all the onboard sensor systems, told them when the legs were in contact with the ground, the angle the legs were positioned at, what attitude the body had with respect to gravity in the ground, that sort of information. A lot of what we learned had to do with how much autonomy can be used onboard a robot given our current level of technology to navigate through the extremely rugged terrains that we saw inside the crater. We had a capability for at least half of the descent to basically turn on all of the onboard intelligence on the robot and let us, in effect, do its own thing. Our hope is that a lot of that will find its way into future planetary missions. That's obviously where NASA's interest lies, is we want to take this and move it out to the surface of other heavenly bodies, the moon, the Mars, and other planets.