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"They ripped it off of NNB!"

Here's what it takes to compete with your humble Imperial Weatherman;

"Messina helped pull together all the major Italian aerospace and engineering universities, as well as the two largest Italian aerospace companies, to support the race to land a robot on the moon by 2012."

Now, for comparison purposes, here's their concept, (artist's version): Image

And here's my description:

Spider Robots

Spider robots were designed prior to, and specifically for, our journey to the moon. We needed an efficient way to do work in low gravity and vacuum.

We needed something that could withstand the temperature extremes, and be robust enough for construction work.

They are large, filling the design space of a four-meter sphere with their eight arms/legs folded along their exterior surfaces.

The arms are fastened at the equator of the sphere, or beltline. This more or less circular ring can rotate if needed, and equipment storage bays are arranged above and below the beltline.

The first segment of the arm is one-fourth the circumference of the sphere. The second is one-half. All joints are freely rotating, and the arms can assume a wide variety of combinations in their orientations.

Note the discrepancy here. In the artist's conception, the outer limb segments are the same length as the closer ones. My design allows a greater limb length without affecting the folding parameters.

The image looks "cute" in a robotic or toy sense, but an image of my spiderbot will be seen to be more capable of conquering the Lunar terrain because it has the reach to be able to lift itself over rocks and low barriers.

Now, to be fair, this seems an obvious design. On the Moon, temperature variation is a strong consideration, and the spherical shape is the most energy-conserving configuration. Folding the legs along the outside is just simple conservation of space available.

I like to think that I have the advantage also of a very simple operator "console". With my design, even an untrained operator would be able to use the robot effectively.

If they need further guidance, and wish to avoid an embarrassingly under-performing robot, I'll be right here.