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An aerobot is an aerial robot, usually used in the context of an unmanned space probe or unmanned aerial vehicle. While work has been done since the 1960s on robot "rovers" to explore the Moon and other worlds in the Solar system, such machines have limitations. They tend to be expensive and have limited range, and due to the communications time lags over interplanetary distances, they have to be smart enough to navigate without disabling themselves. For planets with atmospheres of any substance, however, there is an alternative: an autonomous flying robot, or "aerobot".〔Barnes D.P., Summers, P., Shaw, A., "An investigation into aerobot technologies for planetary exploration," in ''Proc. 6th ESA Workshop on Advanced Space Technologies for Robotics and Automation'', ASTRA 2000. ESTEC Noordwijk, NL, pp. 3.6-5, December 2000. (PDF version ).〕〔Anthony Colozza, Geoffrey Landis, and Valerie Lyons, ''Overview of Innovative Aircraft Power and Propulsion Systems and Their Applications for Planetary Exploration,'' NASA TM-2003-212459 (July 2003) (link to NASA TM )〕 Most aerobot concepts are based on aerostats, primarily balloons, but occasionally airships. Flying above obstructions in the winds, a balloon could explore large regions of a planet in great detail for relatively low cost. Airplanes for planetary exploration have also been proposed. ==Basics of balloons== While the notion of sending a balloon to another planet sounds strange at first, balloons have a number of advantages for planetary exploration. They can be made light in weight and are potentially relatively inexpensive. They can cover a great deal of ground, and their view from a height gives them the ability to examine wide swathes of terrain with far more detail than would be available from an orbiting satellite. For exploratory missions, their relative lack of directional control is not a major obstacle as there is generally no need to direct them to a specific location. Balloon designs for possible planetary missions have involved a few unusual concepts. One is the solar, or infrared (IR) Montgolfiere. This is a hot-air balloon where the envelope is made from a material that traps heat from sunlight, or from heat radiated from a planetary surface. Black is the best color for absorbing heat, but other factors are involved and the material may not necessarily be black. Solar Montgolfieres have several advantages for planetary exploration, as they can be easier to deploy than a light gas balloon, do not necessarily require a tank of light gas for inflation, and are relatively forgiving of small leaks. They do have the disadvantage that they are only aloft during daylight hours. The other is a "reversible fluid" balloon. This type of balloon consists of an envelope connected to a reservoir, with the reservoir containing a fluid that is easily vaporized. The balloon can be made to rise by vaporizing the fluid into gas, and can be made to sink by condensing the gas back into fluid. There are a number of different ways of implementing this scheme, but the physical principle is the same in all cases. A balloon designed for planetary exploration will carry a small gondola containing an instrument payload. The gondola will also carry power, control, and communications subsystems. Due to weight and power supply constraints, the communications subsystem will generally be small and low power, and interplanetary communications will be performed through an orbiting planetary probe acting as a relay. A solar Montgolfiere will sink at night, and will have a guide rope attached to the bottom of the gondola that will curl up on the ground and anchor the balloon during the darkness hours. The guide rope will be made of low friction materials to keep it from catching or tangling on ground features. Alternatively, a balloon may carry a thicker instrumented "snake" in place of the gondola and guiderope, combining the functions of the two. This is a convenient scheme for making direct surface measurements. A balloon could also be anchored to stay in one place to make atmospheric observations. Such a static balloon is known as an "aerostat". One of the trickier aspects of planetary balloon operations is inserting them into operation. Typically, the balloon enters the planetary atmosphere in an "aeroshell", a heat shield in the shape of a flattened cone. After atmospheric entry, a parachute will extract the balloon assembly from the aeroshell, which falls away. The balloon assembly then deploys and inflates. Once operational, the aerobot will be largely on its own and will have to conduct its mission autonomously, accepting only general commands over its long link to Earth. The aerobot will have to navigate in three dimensions, acquire and store science data, perform flight control by varying its altitude, and possibly make landings at specific sites to provide close-up investigation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「aerobot」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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