NASA Wants A Self-driving Mars Rover

NASA's Mars rover, Perseverance, is still roaming the surface of Mars. (photo: Doc. NASA Gov)

JAKARTA - NASA's Mars rover, Perseverance, is still roaming the planet's surface. To achieve their goal, scientists are experimenting with a new capability: autonomously navigating robots.

According to the latest report from Mashable, Tuesday, July 6, so far the robot or rover has been piloted by humans at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the driver is Vandi Verma. She uses 3D glasses to visualize and plan driving routes.

Now, Perseverance is in a Martian crater dubbed Jazero. This new capability allows the rover to navigate itself without the assistance of an expert driver on Earth.

Perseverance is expected to be able to navigate more often by itself. Actually, the rover has an automated driving system called AutoNav. It uses 3D terrain maps to plan safe routes and avoid obstacles.

Therefore, Perseverance should be able to drive on its own without support staff on Earth manually directing it. However, they will still monitor to ensure the selected route is safe.

“We have an ability called thinking while driving. Rover is thinking about autonomous driving when the wheels are turning", said Verma.

According to NASA, this autonomous system is used to accelerate the rover's motion. Because manually navigating the rover from Earth takes a lot of time. That's why the rover can only move more than 200 meters in a day. But with this autonomous navigation capability, Perseverance might be able to go as fast as 120 meters per hour.

"We'll be able to get to where scientists want to get to more quickly. Now we can pass through this more complex terrain instead of circling it: It's not something we were able to do before", said Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance Mars 2020 rover project manager.

Previously, the Curiosity rover, which has hardware similar to Perseverance but lacks the new AutoNav system, currently only travels at about 20 meters per hour.

NASA scientists hope that this increase in speed will help Perseverance in its search for evidence of ancient life on the Red Planet.