The last team members have arrived! Scotty and Yeti were delayed in Christchurch and only arrived yesterday – they can be excused from being tardy since it was out of their control and they had to ride in cargo (with an extended layover in Port Hueneme since the middle of August). Scotty and Yeti are of course the robots that make this research project safe to conduct out on the McMurdo Shear Zone (SZ) which is riddled with crevasses. Yeti was developed at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and its direct descendant is Scotty (a variation and improvement upon the original Yeti-design) which was developed at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) – both in Hanover, New Hampshire. Yeti was of course named for the legendary snow creature in the Himalayas, however Scotty was named for Ron "Scotty" Liston who was an early pioneer in terra-mechanics and also worked the Apollo Lunar Rover – he lent early support and advice during the development of the robots.
Both Yeti and Scotty have the same basic body structure – the 2-front and 2-back wheels can pivot from each other through the center and carry twin boxes on either side. One of the boxes contains all the battery power to drive the robot and the other contains all the associated circuit boards and wiring to communicate both with home base as well as its cargo. Cargo, in this case solar panels for recharging on the fly and ground penetrating radar (GPR) for tracking down buried crevasses in the ice. In a later post I'll be covering all the interior components of the robots and more on their design.
Robots are not exactly compact creatures when you start to consider all of the equipment that is needed to support, control, and maintain them. Here are a few of the containers shipped down from New Hampshire to support these high-tech supports.
After undoing all of the considerable packing material, Yeti is just about ready to roll out of his container after his long trip down. Scotty is patiently waiting next door in his crate - one thing at a time here.
Despite being the last one into the prep room, Scotty makes it out first and rapidly draws everyone in.
Scotty and Yeti are officially unpacked and survived the trip down in their crates.