Robot to Explore Secret Pyramid Passageway

A high-tech robot is setting out to solve one of the Great Pyramid of Giza’s long-standing puzzles. Armed with a drill, a snaking camera, and other state-of-the-art bells and whistles, the “Djedi Rover” will scamper up the mysterious 8-inch tunnels in the Pyramid of Khufu’s so-called “Queen’s Chamber.” A similar shaft in the main burial chamber leads to the outside, but the one in the queen’s chamber has never been adequately explored, AOL News reports.

An earlier robot discovered that the tunnel led to a limestone slab with two copper handles on it. A second robot drilled through the slab in 2002, only to find another limestone doorway. The new robot is equipped with a “sonic surveyor” that can measure the thickness and condition of the other door, and a drill to get through it—though researchers say they’ll only do that if it looks “safe and archeologically useful.” (More Djedi Rover stories.)