Marion Anderson, a graduate student in the BIRDS Lab, was awarded a U-M Space Institute Power Grant in the amount of $4,235, for his project “Development of an Open-Source, Low-Cost Gravity Compensation System for Legged Robots Using Rapid-Fabrication Techniques” in July 2024.
“Marion is working to develop a low-cost gravity compensation system for walking robots. Gravity compensation systems simulate lower (e.g. Martian) gravity while still on Earth. Walking robots offer real advantages over wheeled rovers, but the major gravity compensation systems live in national labs or NASA centers. This makes it difficult to understand how these robots perform in Lunar or Martian gravity. Marion hopes a publicly-available design that is cheap and easy to build will expand interest in walking robots for space exploration. He plans to have a working prototype by October and use it to secure further funding, such as from NASA’s recent collection of Lunar research grants.”