Tooth And Rocky: Micro Mini Rovers

someday a vehicle like this may make tracks on the planet Mars about the size of a pickup truck and loaded with computers it's a test bed for an experimental navigation system that could make it possible for a Rover to travel over hundreds of miles overcome obstacles as big as 1 meter and collect many scientifically interesting samples on a planet hundreds of millions of miles from Earth all without constant human guidance engineers at the jet propulsion laboratory where it's under development call the vehicle Robbie this on the other hand is about the size of a shoe box but it's a real robotic Rover nevertheless and not just a smaller version of Robbie it's a different concept Al [Music] together the high cost of Landing a large Rover on Mars combined with recent advances in microt technology got us to wondering whether or not it would be possible to build a smaller Rover recent AI techniques for controlling a robot that uses very little computation and little memory seem to hold a lot of promise there have been several new techniques developed in artificial intelligence that require little computation and memory JPL built the micro Rover nicknamed tooth to test these ideas in the laboratory the JPL Engineers wanted to know if a robotic Rover requires large computers to perform its necessary functions the answer is no a smaller robot can do the job if it's based on a different design philosophy where Robbie uses onboard sensors to create a map of the terrain immediately ahead and plans a path that's free of obstacles tooth avoids obstacles as it comes upon them it uses beacons to guide it back to its base in this case an incandescent light bulb is used as the home base this kind of robotic Rover does however need the capability to move over rough outdoor terrain and tooth was not designed for outdoor Mobility so the next step was Rocky a true outdoor vehicle with a lot of agility although Rocky is much smaller than the large Rover it is quite Nimble when scrambling over rugged terrain today's test um was the first time we ran the Rover out in the in natural terrain and it performed pretty well on hills and in soft soil the Rover team at JPL is leading the development of micro Rover systems these designs use a number of micro technology tees microprocessors like these will lead to chip-size sensors made of silicon which can measure temperature radiation and the presence of chemicals the prime benefit of the think small concept is low cost many more inexpensive micro robers could be sent on space missions than larger vehicles and could be valuable Pathfinders to later Mann exploration of other worlds