Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots: Robotic parts could be assembled into nimble spider bots for exploring lava tubes or heavy-duty elephant bots for transporting solar panels. -- ScienceDaily

To avoid a bottleneck of bots, a team of MIT engineers is designing a kit of universal robotic parts that an astronaut could easily mix and match to rapidly configure different robot "species" to fit various missions on the moon. Once a mission is completed, a robot can be disassembled and its parts used to configure a new robot to meet a different task. The team calls the system WORMS, for the Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System. The system's parts include worm-inspired robotic limbs that an astronaut can easily snap onto a base, and that work together as a walking robot. Depending on the mission, parts can be configured to build, for instance, large "pack" bots capable of carrying heavy solar panels up a hill.