As part of the TRUSSES project, Dr. Cynthia Sung and PhD student Shivangi Misra took a team of legged and wheeled robots out to White Sands National Park, a lunar-analogue environment, to test cooperative locomotion. These robots were able to connect to one another with rigid, extendable arms and climbed sandy dune slopes of up to 18 degrees while remaining tethered, a first-of-its-kind demonstration! During the expedition, our team also collected data to study the interaction forces between the robots as well as with the dune surface. This will help us test our hypothesis that physically connected robots can stabilize one another and climb sandy sloped terrain with greater success than individual robots!

Special thanks to Feifei Qian and Ryan Ewing for guiding us to suitable dune sites, helping measure terrain properties as well as coordinating the logistics for smooth and safe field work!