New Software Stops Mars Rover Confusion

MattSparkes writes "The Mars rover Spirit used to get quite confused when it came upon a rock. Because it could only plan routes of a metre or two it couldn't understand how to navigate around large objects, and frequently used to rock back and forth for hours trying to figure it out. NASA have written new software called D* for the rover Opportunity, which should allow it to autonomously plan routes up to 50 metres long. The new software still won't be able to avoid sand-traps, though."

Comments

Based on A*?

[benhocking]

I'm guessing the name is meant to suggest similarities to A*, but you think they'd mention that in the article.

Re:Based on A*?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've implemented D*, and while more efficient than A* replanning from scratch in terms of heap percolates, the overhead of D* bookkeeping actually made it slower than just rerunning a tuned A* implementation, with the caveat that this was on maps that I generated; I'm sure one can generate a pathological terrain that would erase the difference. The massive reduction in heap percolates is interesting from a computer science perspective, but in my experience, in the real world D* doesn't really give you new capabilities that just rerunning A* couldn't do. Map representation e.g. quadtree has a much more drastic effect on performance.

Re:Thank you: Why can't New Scientist do this?

[radtea]

Here's one that that really bugs me about online news articles: they rarely take advantage of the medium! Why the hell couldn't New Scientist provide a link to this paper?

Because science journalists and editors know nothing about the fields they report on, and frequently seem actively hostile to the facts in favour of some made-up, mythological story.

Some years ago a colleague at the university where I was a post-doc came into the lab and said, "Today the science section of the LA Times has five stories about stuff that I am either personally familiar with or have actually worked on. Four of them are all but unrecognizable. The fifth is full of things that are not true."

In my subsequent experience as a scientist I have found this to be pretty much par for the course for science journalism. I don't actually know if reporters are as ignorant as they appear, but by the time the edited work gets to the reading public it is almost always spun in such a way as to be misleading or simply wrong.

There seem to be some myths about science that are the bedrock of science reporting, and reporters or editors will distort or simply lie to ensure they reinforce those myths. Some of them are:

1) Science is mysterious and full of contradictions (see yesterdays "hot ice" story)

2) There is no point in anyone trying to understand science, it is beyond you (thus the lack of useful links in stories)

3) Scientists are either put on a pedestal or dragged through the mud. They are never treated as merely ordinary people doing a job or following a vocation.

4) The "story" is more important than the facts.

There are probably a lot more, but basically, science journalism will never be worth anything until it starts actually reporting on science rather than wasting time promulgating editorial myths.