China's Sky Eye has a "pot-cleaning" robot, it looks like this →

The "China Sky Eye" (FAST) is the world's largest radio telescope with the highest observation accuracy. Recently, the "Major Scientific Infrastructure FAST Operation and Maintenance Robot System" project of the National Key R&D Program passed the acceptance. Among them, the reflector laser target maintenance robot, as one of the landmark achievements, can automatically "scrub" the "big pot" of FAST, realizing the automated maintenance functions of cleaning, disassembling and replacing the laser targets on the reflector surface.

Screenshot of Xinhua News Agency video

The 2,225 laser targets distributed on the FAST reflector are an important part of the telescope control system, just like the "eyes" of the reflector, and need to be regularly maintained and replaced. However, the reflector is made of an aluminum plate with a thickness of only 1 mm, which is difficult to bear the weight of a normal adult. Currently, it mainly relies on "microgravity spiders" for manual maintenance, which has the disadvantages of low maintenance efficiency, poor safety, and difficulty in maintaining targets in a large slope environment.

Screenshot of Xinhua News Agency video

The reflective surface laser target maintenance robot was jointly developed by the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Guizhou Radio Astronomy Observatory. The research and development team has overcome technical difficulties such as omnidirectional movement on special surfaces with large slopes, three-dimensional measurement in complex environments, and autonomous tightening of special-shaped bolts in unstructured environments, allowing the robot to autonomously complete target replacement and cleaning tasks and carry out fully automatic target maintenance work.

The project team said that after adaptive debugging in the actual on-site environment, the robot has been successfully used for the replacement and maintenance of FAST's reflective surface laser targets.