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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4180840.stm
Europe has fixed on a concept for its next mission to land on the Red Planet. It aims to send a single robot rover to the Martian surface along with another, stationary, science package. |
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![]() Senior Member ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 ![]() |
Jim Bell said that during certain points of the day, especially at sunrise
and sunset, the Mars Rovers would sometimes refuse to move ahead. Turns out they interpreted their shadows as pits in the ground and did not want to fall into them. They had to be "told" that shadows were okay to drive on. About a decade ago, a robot car designed by the US military being tested on a regular automobile road kept swerving over to the other side of the lane for seemingly no reason. Turned out that a row of trees had their shadows falling across the road and the robot car interpreted them as obstacles and obeyed its programming by trying to avoid them. This does make one admire the abilities of what the brain can do in such a compact package. -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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