In
Mars robots
to get smart upgrade, the BBC's Jonathan Amos writes that new
algorithms in Spirit's and Opportunity's software will search
images for clouds and dust devils, and give priority in uploading
those images.
Currently, the rovers are allocated time to
look for clouds and dust devils, which may or may not appear - they
are naturally transient events. And getting humans to sift the
images is time consuming. ...
"If we could look for a much more extended time and select only
those images with clouds then we could increase our understanding
of how and when these phenomena form. Similarly with the dust
devils [said JPL's Rebecca Castano]."
The Earth Observing-1 satellite has used such algorithms since
2003.
A classic example was an eruption on
Antarctica's Mt Erebus volcano in 2004. Typically, it could take
several weeks to learn such a remote volcano had gone into an
active phase; but as soon as EO-1 detected heat from the lava lake
at the mountain's summit, it reprogrammed its camera to take more
pictures.
The spacecraft also sent a rapid alert to volcanologists on the
mission's science team.
So successful has EO-1's Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment
software been that it is now running the satellite's main science
operations.
The
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