The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, only expected to last about three months, have explored Mars’ bumpy terrain for four years and counting. Recently, this gave
NASA an opportunity to test drive software developed by Tony Stentz, research professor in
CMU's Robotics Institute and Dave Ferguson, Stentz’s former student and now a research scientist at
Intel Research Pittsburgh. Their FieldD* adapted software will help these and future rovers see the big picture.
“The big difference is the previous software would take a snapshot, very localized, and then place it into a terrain assessment,” said Ferguson, a native of New Zealand. “The new stuff will still take that snapshot of the local region, but it remembers what the robot has seen up to then. Previously, it was like driving along with your eyes closed. You suddenly open them and see a rock and move around it. Compare that to remembering where you are and where you’ve been.”
The CMU team worked with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (
JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, that manages the Mars Exploration Rover Mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
“I dreamed of being an astronaut as a kid,” said Ferguson. “I thought I might be the one going to Mars. It is kind of a wild feeling that your software is out there exploring places you’ll never get to go.”
Writer: Sherrie Flick
Source: Dave Ferguson
Image courtesy of Dave Ferguson