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1.4 A Brief History of Robotics
slow. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a robot that was autonomous.
One option would be to have mobile robots land on a planetary conduct pre-
liminary explorations, conduct tests, etc., and radio back the results. These
automated planetary rovers would ideally have a high degree of autonomy,
much like a trained dog. The robot would receive commands from Earth
to explore a particular region. It would navigate around boulders and not
fall into canyons, and traverse steep slopes without rolling over. The robot
might even be smart enough to regulate its own energy supply, for example,
by making sure it was sheltered during the planetary nights and to stop what
it was doing and position itself for recharging its solar batteries. A human
might even be able to speak to it in a normal way to give it commands.
Getting a mobile robot to the level of a trained dog immediately presented
new issues. Just by moving around, a mobile robot could change the world-
for instance, by causing a rock slide. Fig. 1.5b shows astronaut Jim Irwin res-
cuing the lunar rover during an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on Apollo 15
as it begins to slide downhill. Consider that if an astronaut has difficulty find-
ing a safe parking spot on the moon, how much more challenging it would
be for an autonomous rover. Furthermore, an autonomous rover would have
no one to rescue it, should it make a mistake.
Consider the impact of uncertain or incomplete information on a rover
that didn’t have intelligence. If the robot was moving based on a map taken
from a telescope or an overhead command module, the map could still con-
tain errors or at the wrong resolution to see certain dangers. In order to
navigate successfully, the robot has to compute its path with the new data
or risk colliding with a rock or falling into a hole. What if the robot did
something broke totally unexpected or all the assumptions about the planet
were wrong? In theory, the robot should be able to diagnose the problem
and attempt to continue to make progress on its task. What seemed at first
like an interim solution to putting humans in space quickly became more
complicated.
Clearly, developing a planetary rover and other robots for space was go-
ing to require a concentrated, long-term effort. Agencies in the USA such
as NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, were given
the task of developing the robotic technology that would be needed to pre-
pare the way for astronauts in space. They were in a position to take advan-
tage of the outcome of the Dartmouth Conference. The Dartmouth Conference
was a gathering hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) in 1955 of prominent scientists working with computers or on the
theory for computers. DARPA was interested in hearing what the potential