Jan 9 2002
From The Space Library
Researchers at NASA’s JPL successfully demonstrated the first use of robotic rovers capable of cooperating to perform tasks together while navigating uneven natural terrain. The researchers hoped that the rovers would be able to perform sustained research on Mars and to assemble and maintain orbiting spacecraft. In outdoor tests, JPL researchers had used two rovers to simulate the deployment of a solar power station. In these simulations, the two robots had grasped and carried a container measuring 2.5 meters (8 feet) long, for more than 50 meters (160 feet). The project had used new software called the Control Architecture for Multi-Robot Planetary Outposts, which equipped the rovers with a distributed and autonomous intelligence producing instinctively reactive behaviors, shared sense and control, and collective decision making. This new technology, along with other innovations, had developed rovers~referred to as the Robotic Work Crew~capable of sharing both work and thinking. Project scientists hoped these capabilities would enable the rovers to collaborate in performing designated tasks, while coping with the unknown and unpredictable surface of Mars and encountering other scenarios unforeseen by scientists on Earth. (NASA, “Robotic Construction Crew Rolls Up Its Sleeves,” news release 02-04, 9 January 2002; NASA JPL, “Technology~ Feature: Researchers Toy with New Rover Designs,” 21 December 2001, http://jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=489 (accessed 28 July 2008).
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