On February 8, China’s self-developed wind energy robot “Polar Rover” took its first step on the ice sheet near the Zhongshan Station in Antarctica, which is the first robot developed in China based on renewable wind energy.

The “polar rover” body is 1.8 meters long, 1.2 meters high, 1.6 meters wide, and weighs 300 kilograms. It can walk day and night without interruption driven by wind power generation, can cross obstacles with a height of nearly half a meter or more, and can carry out autonomous navigation control of multi-sensor fusion under the complicated terrain of the ice sheet and remote control through satellite links in China. In the future, it can carry atmospheric sensors, snow and ice sampler, and 50 kg mission load of geographical and geological analyzer.

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“Polar Rover” project leader, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics robotics Institute Professor Wang Tianmiao said that this is China’s first based on renewable wind energy driven “polar rover” robot, it with the national 29th Antarctic scientific expedition team to Zhongshan Station for scientific experiments. Including exploring the possibility of using environmentally friendly renewable wind/solar energy to carry out long-term environmental monitoring tasks under extremely harsh and dangerous environmental conditions such as cold, extreme wind, geomagnetic interference, and cosmic rays, laying the foundation for the establishment of intelligent robotized unmanned scientific research stations in China in the future.

In recent years, the United States, Canada, Japan and other countries have attached great importance to the research and development of the application technology of robot Antarctic research, but China’s self-developed “polar rover” robot has carried out experimental research on key technologies in Antarctica, such as wind power generation drive technology, complex ground adaptability self-balancing mechanism technology, and ice sheet autonomous navigation based on vision, laser and GPS integration. It is the first of its kind in the world. This is of great significance to the development of polar science and advanced robot technology in China.