rocki for small lightweight versatile is
the latest in a series of planetary
Rovers that tests the possibility of
exploring the surfaces of other planets
with robots this is Robbie an earlier
Rover experiment
Robbie is as long as a pickup truck and
weighs two tons it is not meant for
space travel but is a valuable testbed
for semi autonomous navigation concepts
rocky 3 closer to the idea of a real
space Explorer weighs about 56 pounds
this mini Rover evolved from many years
of robotics and automation development
at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
small but capable planetary Rovers have
been made possible by the development of
micro technologies from computer chips
to sensors dr. Lonnie Lang the plan is
to have a rover of this kind about seven
kilograms 15 16 pounds built for a small
Lander in the measure system to be able
to do these kinds of tasks for
scientific and exploration Rocky's final
performance test was on a rock-strewn
Mars like location in a dry riverbed
near JPL in Pasadena California in the
background is a surveyor spacecraft of
the type that landed on the moon
twenty-five years ago this demonstration
celebrates that historic surveyor
landing
a camera on the lander notes locations
and is used by the operators to select
targets for the rover when viewed with
special goggles the images appear in
three dimensions the operator designates
a series of waypoints for rocky to
follow on its way to the target rock
activities are programmed in Rocky's
onboard computer and they are triggered
by the operators command first the rover
will deploy a seismometer a fully
functional micro device sensitive enough
to detect the billions of a G needed to
feel a Mars quake the smallest quake a
human can feel is about eight one
thousandth of a G so the instrument is
125 billion times more sensitive than a
human being as rocky travels between
points the operator has identified it is
guided by a new computing technique
called behavior control sensors tell
rocky about its pitch and roll and
modifies the vehicle direction to avoid
dangerous situations the rover's camera
scans the view ahead and rocky moves to
its next task to chip the weathered
surface from iraq so a sensitive
spectrometer can determine the content
of the rock
and now down it's a Grover camera
next Rakhi has to collect a soil sample
and deliver it to the lander where it
will be analyzed by science instruments
rocky 4 is a prototype for an even
smaller lighter Rover one that will
weigh only about 11 pounds it will carry
science instruments capable of testing
the surface and atmosphere of Mars that
rover will be sent to Mars as mankind's
science emissary in 1996 as part of a
NASA mission called Pathfinder
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