Snow surfing with a Antartic Snowbot

by max on Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Check out some of the cool Antartic autonomous solar robots being developed here. Above is a picture of a guy (yes holding a laptop), snow-surfing at about 5mph…

Not too bad on solar power, we give thumbs up for that.

One morning, while taking walking behind the robot and dragging a sled of equipment for quantitatively measuring the strength and cohesion of the snow underfoot, we realized what fools we were to man-haul the equipment ourselves. And, for that matter, how silly even to walk. So, we hooked the sled to the robot and went for a ride. The robot, it turns out, can haul its own weight (nearly 200 lbs.) on a sled and hardly notice it.
This image was another born out of spontaneity, and yet has become of the most popular images from the whole project. Snow surfing behind the robot is not very exciting however; it only travels at a slow walking pace.

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Categories: Business, Consumer, Earth, Educational, Energy, Entertainment, Funny, Industrial, Misc, Motor, Robots, Solar.

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7 Responses to “Snow surfing with a Antartic Snowbot”

Gadget News » Unanticipated Sport: Solar Robot Snow Surfing says:

April 8, 2007 at 8:27 am

[...] Thayer School of Engineering researchers at Dartmouth College discovered that their “scalable, solar-powered, science platforms for the Antarctic” not only pull their own weight on the snow, but can pull the weight of a researcher (complete with laptop) on a sled, too (sadly, at no more than 5 mph). SOLAR ROBOT SNOW SURFING ANYONE? [...]
ZTMax: Latest Gadget and Technology News » Unanticipated Sport: Solar Robot Snow Surfing says:

April 8, 2007 at 8:37 am

[...] Thayer School of Engineering researchers at Dartmouth College discovered that their “scalable, solar-powered, science platforms for the Antarctic” not only pull their own weight on the snow, but can pull the weight of a researcher (complete with laptop) on a sled, too (sadly, at no more than 5 mph). SOLAR ROBOT SNOW SURFING ANYONE? [...]
Blue Sky Mining » Solar-Powered Robot Used For Snow-Surfing says:

April 8, 2007 at 9:19 am

[...] :: Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College via Zedomax [...]
Gadget & Tech News » Unanticipated Sport: Solar Robot Snow Surfing says:

April 8, 2007 at 10:21 am

[...] Thayer School of Engineering researchers at Dartmouth College discovered that their “scalable, solar-powered, science platforms for the Antarctic” not only pull their own weight on the snow, but can pull the weight of a researcher (complete with laptop) on a sled, too (sadly, at no more than 5 mph). SOLAR ROBOT SNOW SURFING ANYONE? [...]
girrrrrrr2 says:

August 17, 2007 at 2:20 pm

darn… it probably could be made to work faster… right???

[Reply]
Izl says:

August 28, 2007 at 6:52 pm

Wow thats some hardcore speed there

[Reply]
13 Earth Lovin’ Solar Gadgets » The UberReview says:

April 21, 2008 at 11:49 am

[...] of Antarctic summer as scientists and their laptops are towed over the ice at a sedate 5 mph. [Zedomax via The Raw [...]

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