This paper presents an overview of ongoing research in surface exploration at the GRASP Lab. The objective of the work presented here is to design a system that will explore an environment that is unknown and unconstrained and will enable a robot to adapt to varying surroundings. We are investigating the necessary components/modules that must be embedded into a robot for it to have exploratory capabilities. We have designed and are implementing exploratory procedures (ep's) to recover the mechanical properties from a surface given minimal a priori information so that a robot or a vehicle can decide whether to and how to move on this surface. The laboratory setup involves a compliant wrist with six degrees of freedom, mounted on a robot arm, and a laser range finder, mounted on another robot arm, as the primary sensors to detect the response of surfaces with varying mechanical properties.