Chinese researchers are testing and training robotic dogs in preparation for future exploration of the moon’s underground, an area of great scientific interest that is considered ideal for establishing human lunar bases.
Created by lava flows and located in a forest region near Jingbo Lake by the city of Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang province, the cave is “strikingly similar” to the lunar underground environment, according to the university post.
There, some sections suddenly narrow to a point such that research personnel cannot pass through, and that is where the robotic dogs come in: they are deployed as “scouts” to reliably execute surveying tasks that humans cannot easily accomplish.
Testing their performance in a “lunar-like lava tube environment” enables researchers to advance the embodied intelligence technologies used in deep-space exploration, said Zhang Shanghang, a researcher at the university and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, a non-profit AI research laboratory also known as Zhiyuan Institute.
