China deploys robot dogs in simulated moon conditions ahead of lunar mission

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.

According to a September 28 post on Peking University’s social media account, a team from the university’s school of computer science has developed two specialised robotic dogs for the exploration mission, and they have been tested in a cave in northeastern China that simulates the lunar underground.

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.

Peking University’s ultimate goal is said to be to independently develop a deep-space exploration robot capable of undertaking future missions to celestial bodies such as the moon and Mars. Photo: Handout

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.

South China Morning Post