Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 21:56:26 GMT
Server: Apache/1.2-dev
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Last-Modified: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 20:38:30 GMT
ETag: "c9a02-995-3177f9c6"
Content-Length: 2453
Accept-Ranges: bytes
The Rockettes: 10-Gram Microrovers for Mars
The Rockettes
10-Gram Microrovers for Mars
No, no, they're not golf balls! They are an artist's conception of what a Mars landing made by a community of microrovers would look like. The idea is that a whole bunch of very small rovers could spread out and collect data collectively. If each robot had a few sensors and were programmed to disperse around the landing area, it might be possible to gather more data than their size would suggest.
Having more than rover also allows for greater mission flexibility and reliability. If there are two very interesting rocks in different directions from each other, a single rover would have a difficult time getting to both of them at the same time. Also, if a few of the microrovers malfunction, there will still be enough left to complete the task at hand.
People
Professor Rodney Brooks
(brooks@ai.mit.edu)
Principal Investigator
James McLurkin (jdmac@ai.mit.edu)
Microrobots
Sponsors
This work is sponsored by NASA JPL
Related Research at the MIT AI Lab
Pebbles
A vision-based mobile robot that uses a single camera for obstacle
avoidance in rough, unstructured environments. Some of the potential
applications for this research include Mars
exploration and explosive ordnance
disposal.
The Ants
Microrobots designed to explore ideas
about robotic communities. One of the potential applications for this
research is explosive ordnance
disposal.
Related Research Elsewhere