中国在塔克拉玛干沙漠测试类《沙丘》的铁矿采集履带机器人
China tests a Dune-like iron-harvesting crawler robot in the Taklamakan Desert
中国研究人员研发了一款可自主行驶、从沙中采集铁的履带机器人，并在塔克拉玛干沙漠沙丘进行测试。该设备由塔里木大学研究人员开发，使用基于稀土磁铁的分离器，通过干式磁选从沙中筛出铁磁性材料；此前研究估计，塔克拉玛干沙地含铁量约为 6%。
Chinese researchers have built a self-propelled crawler robot that harvests iron from sand and tested the device in the dunes of the vast Taklamakan Desert – an area the size of Germany – in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
In Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune, mobile factories traverse the sands of the fictional planet Arrakis to extract the drug melange, also known as “spice”. The real-world device similarly travels across the desert, extracting valuable resources.
The rare earth-magnet-based separator, developed by researchers from Tarim University in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, filters ferromagnetic materials from sand using dry magnetic separation.
According to the team’s study published in the Chinese-language journal Metal Mine, the Taklamakan Desert contains “vast quantities of ferromagnetic materials”, with previous research estimating iron content in its sands of about 6 per cent.
来源：南华早报 · scmp.com