Ice cool...

The Cool Robot is a solar-powered four-wheel-drive autonomous science vehicle designed for summer use in the Antarctica and Greenland.

Developed in New Hampshire by the US Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, together with the state’s Dartmouth College, it weighs 61kg and measures 1.2x1.2x1.0m.

Providing the summer sun is above 16°C, Cool Robot can drive on soft snow entirely powered by its solar cells at a speed of 0.78m/s where consumption averages to 160W.

Estimates based on these figures, obtained from testing in Greenland last year, suggest that over two weeks it will be able to carry a 15kg payload 500km across the Arctic plateau. This includes crossing 0.3m high, 2m wavelength, wind-sculpted ice obstacles.

Four brushless DC motors feed the wheels, and a maximum power point tracker controls the solar cells, whose output is boosted 30 per cent by reflection from nearby snow.