The Husky A200 is like a Mars Rover for research on Earth, capable of carrying large payloads. It is basically a shell, ready to take anything researchers want to give it.
Husky A200 by Clearpath Robotics
The 4×4 unmanned ground vehicle can trek through snow, over large rocks, up steep hills, and through just about anything you need to run through. Its 13-inch tires and 5-inch ground clearance makes it a perfect candidate to roll around terrain like the Rocky Mountains.
The Husky A200 can also work autonomously by creating an environmental map of its surrounding environment and wondering around that area collecting data.
The Canadian Space Agency is currently using the unmanned vehicle to attach some of their equipment on what they would use on a Mars or Lunar rover. They have created a mock-lunar environment, and utilize Husky A200′s ability to roam around tough terrain to see how their research tools might handle certain scenarios on another celestial body.
Husky A200 acts as a good practice point for research organizations like the Canadian Space Agency, because it keeps them from having to risk their million dollar rovers in these test environments. It is able to carry up to 165 pounds of equipment in its payload bay.
The Husky A200 is versatile because of the endless things a scientist could mount on it for research. It is even designed with a scalable and open architecture, so it is ideal for testing and developing multi-robot systems.
It also has open-source capability, so researchers not only have full access to what goes on top of a Husky A200, but how it performs as well.
The souped-up off-road remote controlled vehicle has a maximum operating time of 8 hours, and can travel 3.3 feet per second; not bad for $12,000.
