NASA Robots and Rovers At Play In the Desert

Geoffrey.landis writes "Robots and rovers will be running around in the desert in the NASA Desert RATS ('Research and Technology Studies') test in Arizona, including the heavy-lift rover 'All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer,' or ATHLETE. (See videos from newscientist.com). Some NASA robots from an earlier field test of robotic lunar excavators can be seen on video from the NASA page."

Comments

Re:Sped Up

[swanzilla]

Processing speed is not the issue at hand. Energy management basically requires these things to move slowly, in order to achieve the mission goals set forth. Regardless of the CPU, simulations like these are limited to roughly twelve hours of sunlight as the power source. You could design a robot to move very quickly, but the energy expended to increase speed would not be beneficial to the overall aim of the project. Take the Mars Pathfinder mission into consideration. Over the course of around 2000 hours, the rover took over 17000 pictures and travelled about 100 meters. It didn't move quickly, but achieved what it set out to do.