Robot Dante’s Voyage in Antarctica (1992)

“Following in the fictional footsteps of the poet Dante, who descended into hell in his Divine Comedy, a robot also named Dante will later this month descend into the inferno of Mount Erebus, an active volcano in Antarctica. The eight-legged, spider-like robot, developed by two American universities and NASA, will gather data and samples from the hostile environment inside the volcano’s crater. At the same time, robotics researchers hope to gain valuable experience about how to build robots to explore the surfaces of other planets.

“Dante arrives in Antarctica this week, and will then be transported to a base camp at the foot of the 3800-metre volcano. There it will be loaded onto a cart equipped with an electric winch and known as Geryon (after the creature that carried Dante and Virgil from one circle of hell down to the next in the Comedy). Geryon will haul itself and Dante up a cable that will be fixed up the side of the volcano, until it reaches the edge of the crater. […]”    —Jonathan Beard, New Scientist, December 12, 1992

For more, see the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute’s website. See also the related sighting below, on CMU’s Dante II.

Related Sighting

Robot Dante II Explores Alaskan Volcano (1994)