REAL LIFE NEWS: CURIOSITY CONTROLS ITS OWN DESTINY
by Hazed
While we were away, NASA decided to give the Curiosity rover some autonomy, by allowing it to make up its own mind where to drive.
Curiosity knows its destination, but the vehicle can now pick its exact route without having to wait while pictures of the terrain are beamed back to Earth and instructions sent in return. Instead, it analyses the pictures itself in order to decide which path to take.
A spokesman for NASA explained, “On Tuesday, August 27, Curiosity successfully used autonomous navigation to drive onto ground that could not be confirmed safe before the start of the drive. This was a first for Curiosity. In a preparatory test last week, Curiosity plotted part of a drive for itself, but kept within an area that operators had identified in advance as safe.”
The driver of the rover, Mark Maimone, added, “Curiosity takes several sets of stereo pairs of images, and the rover’s computer processes that information to map any geometric hazard or rough terrain. The rover considers all the paths it could take to get to the designated endpoint for the drive and chooses the best one.”
Sounds good, until the robots rebel and rise up against us, at which point who knows where Curiosity will decide to trundle off to? Maybe we can expect it in Chez Diesel one day.
