Today we can say that Japan is moving closer to be the first nation to have more robots than humans. But can the technology that goes behind these robots used in crucial mission such as manned mission to the red planet and the moon…? I guess the answer is No.
The reason for this is that these robots are used according to a predefined program that is fed into its chips.
This program acts like a brain and the robot continues to perform the task until it encounters a break operation.
If now we consider the condition on Mars and Moon we have to say that astronauts will be needing robots that can do much more than just performing operations according to the program.
The Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity need mission specialists to control them every second. During the biennial solar conjunction signals cannot be transmitted to these rovers. So scientists feed them with information that is needed for the time and the rovers just sit tight and gather some data.
When the conjunction is over these specialists again start transmitting data and these rovers once again begin their work.
For manned mission robots cannot just sit tight and gather data. Astronauts will be requiring these robots to do more meaningful tasks.
An engineering giant named Honeywell, has demonstrated a robotics platform that can integrate data from a virtual model of the environment with that of its surroundings using primitive sight such as sonar and infrared.
This technique can allow a robot to navigate on its own using a 3D map of Mars or Moon.
Such a technology once incorporated will make robots more responsible and may convince humans to trust the machines.
Via: Wired
