Which technologies provide the best return-on-investment for intelligent rovers?
Whenever the Mars Pathfinder rover experienced a failure, it had to stop, wait for the next scheduled opportunity to communicate its problem to Earth (relatively brief periods each day, due to limitations of the rover’s solar batteries), and wait for new commands attempting to resolve the problem. After each command, the Earthbound controllers would await Pathfinder’s progress report before issuing a follow-up command. The process, guided by extreme caution, was tedious and time-consuming. The twin MERs (Mars Explorer Rovers) currently on Mars follow a similar procedure. Technology that would increase a rover’s autonomy — that is, improve its ability to conduct science while reducing its need to phone home for help — would save a great deal of time and therefore enable the rover to accomplish much more. These studies represent efforts to determine the relative benefits of investing in various software technologies that purport to help Mars rovers do science more efficiently, avoid mo
