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Hyperion Rover, 1 km On One Command

Posted by Hemos on from the planning-ahead dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Carnegie Mellon's next generation robot just finished its Chilean expedition and achieved a new planetary exploration benchmark, including being the first autonomous rover to cover 1 km on a single command. The other milestones from the Atacama Desert, Chile--the driest place on the planet--centered on over-the-horizon stereo navigation, sun-tracking for efficient solar panel pointing, and fault recovery. CMU shows pictures of the robot, called Hyperion, in action. One of its prime objectives was to plot courses that avoid shade, by finding the position of virtually everything in the solar system."

5 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Perfect... by SuperDuG · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I mean lets face it the smarter robots get the more we advance as a race. If we can understand the minds we program to be able to see the logic or logical answer then we better start to understand ourselves.

    But the problem being it begins to raise questions about the future, if we model a machine after ourselves so much will it be our demise? Science fiction has a way of blowing things out of proportion. When we first started seeing atomic weapons there was a fear we'd destroy the world over and over again, but we haven't yet.

    I think the more we learn to understand ourselves the closer we are to advancing the human race to the next level of existance.

    "Forget about exploring space, we still don't have the slightest clue about our own bodies".

    --
    Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
  2. Position tracking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually tracking the position of the sun, moons and the planet it's on and it's own position on the planet (or moon) can be very usefull. If that data is interpreted intelligently, the rover could identify locations that have permanent shade and avoid those. Likewise it could figure out if a location is currently shaded, but won't be in a couple of hours, and decide to venture into that shaded environment. Or it could not go into a location currently under a blistering(sp?) sun knowing that this location will soon be shaded voor several days.

    Knowing the state of the environment and the ability to make predictions in regards to that state are usefull for autonomous machines. (stating the obvious, yes I know)

  3. Is it up to the DARPA challenge? by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A while back there was a story on Slashdot about a $1M prize to the first group who could design a robot to autonomously travel from LA to Las Vegas... From the sounds of it, this might be a good candidate for the challenge!

    --
    Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
  4. Re:That's impressive by Thud457 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    See: "grit trucks"

    (Also look at the linked page with the BB gatling gun).

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  5. DARPA Grand Challenge - Join Team Overbot by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Team Overbot is developing an autonomous robot vehicle for entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge. 200 miles through the desert in 10 hours - no driver. $1,000,000 prize.

    We have to do a lot better than Hyperion did. 300km, not one. And faster.

    We're looking for a few good people. Hard work, no pay, some risk, a chance for a fraction of the prize. See our current openings.

    We're in Silicon Valley. We have funding, a shop in an industrial park in Redwood City, a vehicle under construction, and six people. We need about six more.