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"Part-Time" Scientists Aim To Build Autonomous Moon Rover
First time accepted submitter ziegenberg writes "The lunar rover 'Asimov' developed by the Part-Time Scientists, and due to land in 2014, will be the first autonomously navigated rover on the Moon. Its autonomous navigation system is a major technological leap. While the Russian Moon rovers Lunokhod 1 and 2 in the early 70s were fully controlled from Earth, today's Mars rovers like NASA's Mars Exploration Rover 'Opportunity,' which has been tirelessly exploring the Red Planet since 2004, are autonomous. However, Opportunity requires nearly three minutes to process a pair of images — a delay that causes it to move at an average speed of just 1 cm/sec or less. New developments by the technology partnership between the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics and the PTS have created, for the first time, an autonomous navigation system for a rover that has the capacity to process multiple images per second. The technology boosts a stereo camera that Asimov will use to calculate its own motion, generate a 2.5-dimensional environmental model, evaluate the site and determine a collision-free path — all in real time."
It seems like every month now that I wake up in the morning and see another amazing application for GPUs. It is incredible to see the progress that a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry can bring to other markets like space exploration that would normally run on super expensive first-generation prototype hardware.
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Granted, the insolation will be better on the Moon than on Mars (closer to the Sun), but... just how much power their GPU is going to require for computing the 2.5 D env data?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
How come they didn't just use a laser range finder to create a 3d map of the terrain around the robot?
Rocket Surgeon.
Wouldn't get an image over the poles, but who needs those? Still not practical: The moon is a long way up. Low earth orbit is not. To get the same image from the moon as an LEO sat would require ridiculously large and delicate optics. Worse, got to get to the moon. LEO is easy, but moon would need more powerful, not-mass-produced rockets. Then you've got to put the thing together - no way that an instrument that large is landing in one piece, so you need either telepresence robots or a manned mission to bolt it all together.
But the moon surface is rock stable.
I guess you've never heard of moon quakes. Rock stable my ass. Consider this the new thing you learned today.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Woosh!
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It always bugs me how people seem to often use the term Scientist for someone who is actually doing Engineering. There's no shame in engineering. I'm an engineer, and engineering is no trivial job. But as I understand it, it is the scientists that figure out how the world works, and the engineers use that knowledge to design new things. Both require serious insightfulness and creativity.
Like in Venture Brothers, Rusty Venture calls himself a "super scientist." Indeed if this were reality, he would have to do a heck of a lot of science. But in fact, the majority of what he does is engineering, building huge mechanical whatzits and stuff.
Why do scientists get all the credit?
(P.S. I think technically I'm a scientist also, because I have a Ph.D. (optional) and conduct and publish research. But I don't think I'm as good a scientst as many of my colleagues. What makes me competitive is that I have very strong engineering skills, which makes my experimental systems and experiments more robust.)