Phobos First: A Mission to Settle Mars

Establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars is an important step in mankind’s goal of expanding life beyond the Earth. Phobos First is a plan to establish a Martian colony while minimizing the risks of the colonization process and using only technology that is either available now, or is feasible within the next decade. The Phobos scenario does this by breaking the settlement process into smaller steps, each of which is a gradual but important advancement in and of itself, but when combined, results in a thriving human colony on another planet, capable of supporting itself and expanding through in-situ resource utilization. Central to the scenario is a manned orbital outpost on Phobos, from which teleoperated robots would be controlled to construct the permanent settlement on Mars

Multi-Segment Parallel Continuum Manipulator

Continuum manipulators are a type of robot arm that resemble biological tentacles and trunks. They have a flexible and compliant structure, which may allow them to out-perform rigid-link designs in cluttered workspaces or in environments that contain people. While most continuum manipulators are required to have constant curvature along the length of each segment, a new design known as a parallel continuum manipulator removes this restriction and inherits some properties of parallel rigid-link robots such as greater stability, precision, strength, and maneuverability. Until now, only single segment forms of these manipulators have been created. This project expands this manipulator design concept by creating the first multi-segment parallel continuum manipulator