The Droid That NASA Should Be Sending To Mars
Keith’s note: While NASA pours money into its goofy R5 robot that cannot walk unless it is on a hoist, controlled by a human, and is always broken, Boston Dynamics continues to make astonishing progress on autonomous robots. Imagine if you had something like this on Mars as part of a sample return mission. It would allow access to places that rovers cannot go and has dexterity unmatched by anything NASA has built. Wouldn’t it be cool if that first SpaceX Red Dragon opened up and one of these droids walked out?
The BD robots are fantastic, but even with wheels the MERs and Curiosity have done remarkably well. At the moment wheeled systems are more reliable and require less energy and maintenance than legs, although the latter are more capable on rough terrain.
SpaceX should just announce their own version of Project M and Musk announce cooperation with Open AI etc.
That’s a great suggestion Keith. Send it to SpaceX.
Cheers
I, for one, wish to be among the first to welcome our new overlords. Just sayin’…
I’m hoping for a Martian ar(ies)oplane to emerge from RD-2 actually, or at least a http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/ad…
Watch AMEE work in the movie Red Planet…
NASA has so missed the boat on robotics. With Musk going to Mars and robots poised to perform more and more tasks, the questions about NASA’s relevance are going to get louder and LOUDER. Gee, think it was a mistake to give a cutting edge research project to a space flight center?
I don’t think I’d assign poor performance in this arena to the quality of any space flight center but to the availability of direction and funding.
I think that reliability is equal to or more important than capability when it comes to sending something to Mars
I doubt this new robot is autonomous, although it is obviously untethered. Without a doubt it is nimble. Boston Dynamics seems to excel at mobility.
I recognize this isn’t the real purpose, but I can’t help wondering about what kind of nightmares any children in this household would have. Or the adults, for that matter.
Interesting to note the Google (or Alphabet) put Boston Dynamics up for sale recently since they did not see any way they could make an economic return on their investment!