Planetary rovers may soon have an eight-legged mechanized side-kick to help them explore distant planets. The Scorpion robot is able to descend steep cliffs, climb rough terrain, and squeeze into crannies that are inaccessible to larger, wheeled vehicles. The dog-sized prototype is the brainchild of Frank Kirchner, a robotics specialist at the University of Bremen in Germany. It is currently being evaluated at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.Some of the most interesting places on Mars are on the faces of cliffs or in areas that are too small or rocky for a car-sized rover to reach, says Silvano Colombano, a NASA scientist and collaborator on the project at Ames. A Scorpion, however, could "go into these areas, look at the geology and pick up samples", he suggests.Walking robotics is a relatively new field, and engineers are taking cues from biology to give these machines versatile locomotive capabilities.

The Scorpion, for example, moves by following an internally generated pattern based on the movement of its real-life counterparts. "The program has the flexibility to allow [the robot] to adapt to the environment," says Colombano. Essentially, he says, it has "reflexes that take over at the point when the motion is somehow obstructed".

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Great! This will surely develop greater probability of finding things that the rovers couldn't! We can definetly travel more area with this robot. Hopefully this project finishes soon.

Yes i agree with what it says, a scorpion is a much better idea..but only because of its small size and its ability to pick up samples.

but even if it finds something of interest it will probably be covered up like everything else.... I can see the news now " Robot unreachable by communication after landing in Cydonia...."

Indeed this will make exploration much easier and hopefully will result in even more robotic craft beings sent to other worlds!

But if it is smaller, it won't be able to have as much equipment as the rovers (are they really car size like the artical says?) and it won't have as much capacity to hold samples. But it's mobility is awsome.

I saw one of these on the Discovery Channel not long ago. The main problem at the time was it was still connected to a large computer to control it. since things are getting smaller all the time they may have resolved this problem.
As for it getting buried in the sand, its multi-leg configuration would make it easer to dig and climb out of soil that tracks and wheels would stall in.

they will send the scorpion to the planet along with a rover, the rover can house the needed tools the scorpion could use

WITH A GOOD RADIO LINK THAT MIGHT WORK. But its walking program would have to be incorporated into a Base- Transceiver. With the time delay from earth it would be a real pain getting around.