Athlete
Spacecraft · USA
Original archive entry. The text, images and links below are kept as they were written.
Credit: JPL
American lunar rover. Study 2005. Athlete was a Habot-inspired mobility system for doing cargo handling, assembly, maintenance, and servicing tasks on the moon. Each of the six limbs had a 6-degree-of-freedom manipulator with a wheel at the end.
The rover could drive in good terrain and walk in bad terrain. The limbs could also be used for manipulation tasks by snapping on tools that were driven by the wheel motor.
The development team included JPL, JSC, ARC, Stanford, and Boeing and demonstrated a robotic vehicle that was capable of efficient rolling mobility over Apollo-like undulating terrain and walking over extremely rough or steep terrain.