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Mars Lander's Robot Arm Shuts Down To Save Itself
Cowards Anonymous passes along a PCWorld article that begins, "The robotic arm on the Mars Lander found itself in a tough position over the weekend. After receiving instructions for a movement that would have damaged its wrist, the robotic arm recognized the problem, tried to rectify it and then shut down before it could damage itself, according to Ray Arvidson, a co-investigator for the Mars Lander's robotic arm team and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis."
A mars probe actually working past a slight error in instructions? That's news to me!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Years ago when I worked at the post office, sometimes the sorting machines would just stop and wouldn't restart. Upon further inspection, it would sometimes turn out to be a magazine with 2 different bar code stickers on it. The machine wanted to send it to two different bins and just shut down. Every time that happened and we sat around waiting for it to be fixed, I pictured the machine saying, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" then singing Bicycle Built for Two in a slowly descending manner.
Upon further recollection, occassionally, when I felt like a break, I would affix an additional bar code sticker from a different zip code to a periodical. I don't recall anyone ever catching on.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Since there are no humans on Mars, they needed to implement only the 3rd.
It's a modified Nestor.
NASA sent an instruction to the lander that by all rights should have rendered it completely useless, and this restored your faith in NASA? just...wow....
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999