We present a method for image-guided exploration for mobile robotic systems. Our approach extends ergodic exploration methods, a recent exploration approach that prioritizes complete coverage of a space, with the use of a learned image classifier that automatically detects objects and updates an information map to guide further exploration and localization of objects. Additionally, to improve outcomes of the information collected by our robot's visual sensor, we present a decomposition of the ergodic optimization problem as bi-level coarse and fine solvers, which act respectively on the robot's body and the robot's visual sensor. Our approach is applied to geological survey and localization of rock formations for Mars rovers, with real images from Mars rovers used to train the image classifier. Results demonstrate 1) improved localization of rock formations compared to naive approaches while 2) minimizing the path length of the exploration through the bi-level exploration.

The Aerospace Corporation President and CEO Steve Isakowitz said he anticipates the future of space exploration and defense will include AI-controlled satellites and permanent living on the surface of the Moon and Mars. Speaking with Fox News Digital at the Milken Global Conference on May 4, Isakowitz noted that NASA has been using artificial intelligence (AI) for many years in Mars rovers because of the time it takes to communicate back and forth with Earth. The rover needed to know where to go and how to do so safely to combat the delay. Today, with the expansion in capabilities of AI and smaller, more affordable computer chips, advanced AI tech can now be packed into the satellites orbiting Earth. "I do think we're entering an age where we're going to have hyper-intelligence satellites, satellites that will not just be dumb cameras that are looking at the Earth and just filming everything, but you could tell it what to look for. So, don't just take pictures of the Pacific Ocean. Look for these kinds of tankers or look for these kinds of ships or look for these kind of warships or these kind of airplanes where you actually have the satellite. Know what it's looking at that has the intelligence to know if it doesn't feel well," Isakowitz said.

Extreme cold is merciless on machinery. Rubber seals stiffen and crack. The problems pile up as the temperature falls. Metal becomes brittle, and wires contract. Batteries stop working, adhesives stop sticking and LCD screens go black as their liquid crystal freezes solid.

NASA's Perseverance rover has been aptly named because -- nearly two months after beginning its search into past life on Mars -- it has still yet to find any viable samples. The car-sized robot began its mission to find ancient biomarkers in the Martian clay on April 22, which could indicate if alien life ever existed on the Red Planet. It has been roaming around an ancient delta to look for sampling sites that might contain ancient microbes and organics. The rover then drills down to extract a specimen that it plans to leave at the base of the delta to be retrieved in future missions. However, NASA has since revealed that, so far, no samples have been successfully collected. The fragile clay materials the rover targets have been known to fracture, crack and crumble during the abrasion and coring process.

After months of spaceflight, an 8-minute plunge to the surface of Mars, and weeks of exploration, NASA's Perseverance rover is beginning its primary scientific task: drilling out finger-size cores of martian rock for return to Earth. If all goes well, the first drilling sample will be collected from Jezero crater, a former lakebed, by early August. Perseverance has operated well since its February landing, and it recently tested its rock storage system, using its robotic arm to stow a sampling tube into its guts. There the empty tube was imaged and then sealed for storage. “The great news is that it all worked perfectly,” says Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We are ready to sample.” Now, 1 kilometer south of its landing site, Perseverance has reached an array of what its operating team calls paver stones—flat, white, dust-coated rocks found throughout much of the floor of Jezero crater. Here, on what is believed to be the most ancient terrain in the crater, nearly 4 billion years old, the team will direct the rover to drill and collect its sample, targeting a rock that is average in chemistry, mineralogy, and texture. The chalk-size core will be stored in an ultraclean metallic tube, one of 38 samples the rover will eventually collect, with about 30 of those likely to be returned to Earth by later missions. It will reside in the rover's belly until it is deposited in a cache on the surface near the crater's rim a year and a half from now. Whether the paver stone landscape was deposited by the lake or formed by volcanic flows isn't clear. But if it is volcanic, it might have trapped radioactive elements that a lab on Earth could analyze to determine accurate dates for the lake's existence. The drill operators don't know what to expect because the rocks are covered with sand grains and pebbles, along with some sort of purplish coating, says Ken Farley, the mission's project scientist and a geologist at the California Institute of Technology. But before drilling into the pavers, the rover will unleash one instrument that could help answer this puzzle: an abrasion bit mounted at the end of its 2-meter-long arm. After grinding into the rock, the arm will blow compressed gas to clear away the grit, giving a clear glimpse of the underlying rock. The rover can then use its arm-mounted camera and laser and x-ray probes to probe its structure and mineralogy. “I'm pretty confident we will be able to answer this question,” Farley says. Perseverance has already spotted other tantalizing sites to explore and sample in Jezero crater. In the ancient delta to its west that is the rover's destination next year, its cameras have revealed distinctive layered deposits that show the lake was high, quiet, and stable for a long time, Farley says. Above those layers lie 1-meter-wide smooth boulders that could only have been carried by floodwater later in the lake's history. This suggests the lake could have seen distinct phases in its life, which fits with a larger picture of the planet's history in which lakes were common billions of years ago, then gave way to periodic floods after the climate cooled, Farley says. A long-lived lake might have also provided the nutrients and habitat to fuel life, says Kennda Lynch, an astrobiologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute who is unaffiliated with the mission. “This is great. I feel more confident we chose the right place to go.” Samples and measurements from Perseverance's next target, Séítah, a region of sand dunes and ridges to its west that the car-size rover has skirted past, could test that picture. Seen from orbit to be rich in olivine, a volcanic mineral, and carbonates, which can form when olivine is exposed to water and carbon dioxide, Séítah has unexpectedly complex geology, including layered terrain that might preserve signs of past life or patterns of water flow. But the rover can't drive into it without getting stuck in the dunes, so the Perseverance team devised an incursion from above and behind to access its secrets. First, the rover's miniature Ingenuity helicopter, in its ninth flight earlier this month, scouted across Séètah in a 625-meter journey, breaking records for flight duration and speed before landing on the other side of the dunes. The helicopter photographed the intersection of Séètah with the paver unit that Perseverance is now exploring—a boundary that could reveal whether the pavers continue beneath Séitah's dunes, an important fact if a volcanic date is found. And it also scouted fractures that could hold evidence of whether ancient subsurface habitats existed in Jezero. Meanwhile, from afar, Perseverance has spied fine layering in Séítah's ridges, including a prominent 40-meter-tall plateau dubbed Kodiak that, in all likelihood, marks the delta's incursion into the lakebed. Such layers could be caused by mudstones, which smother and preserve life on Earth. But the layers could have a volcanic origin, as well—and so the rover will loop south around Séètah later this year, nudging into a flat space where it can safely sample and tease out that story. Once the Séítah campaign is done, Perseverance will backtrack all the way north to its landing site, “putting the pedal to the metal,” Trosper says. From there it will continue north then west on a safe route to the looming cliff of the main delta—and the life-trapping muds entombed within it.

Learn to write programs using the foundational AI algorithms powering everything from NASA's Mars Rover to DeepMind's AlphaGo Zero. Learn to write AI programs using the algorithms powering everything from NASA's Mars Rover to DeepMind's AlphaGo Zero.

A small robotic helicopter named Ingenuity made space exploration history on Monday when it lifted off the surface of Mars and hovered in the wispy air of the red planet. It was the first machine from Earth ever to fly like an airplane or a helicopter on another world. The achievement extends NASA's long, exceptional record of firsts on Mars. "We together flew at Mars," MiMi Aung, the project manager for Ingenuity, said to her team during the celebration. "And we together now have this Wright brothers moment."

Cobots or collaborative robots are robots that are built for direct contact and interaction with humans like a robot dog or a robotic vacuum. There have been a surprising amount of cobots in space. CIMON was made by IBM, AIRBUS and the DLR (German Aerospace Center). The original CIMON was first proposed in 2016 and went to the ISS in 2018 for 14 months. CIMON 2 went up to the ISS on December 5th, 2019 and it is scheduled to stay there for 3 years.

Mars Rover Curiosity has been on the Red Planet for going on eight years, but its journey is nowhere near finished -- and it's still getting upgrades. You can help it out by spending a few minutes labeling raw data to feed to its terrain-scanning AI. Curiosity doesn't navigate on its own; there's a whole team of people on Earth who analyze the imagery coming back from Mars and plot a path forward for the mobile science laboratory. In order to do so, however, they need to examine the imagery carefully to understand exactly where rocks, soil, sand and other features are. This is exactly the type of task that machine learning systems are good at: You give them a lot of images with the salient features on them labeled clearly, and they learn to find similar features in unlabeled images.

NASA's Mars rovers have been one of the great scientific and space successes of the past two decades. Four generations of rovers have traversed the red planet gathering scientific data, sending back evocative photographs, and surviving incredibly harsh conditions--all using on-board computers less powerful than an iPhone 1. The latest rover, Perseverance, was launched on July 30, 2020, and engineers are already dreaming of a future generation of rovers. While a major achievement, these missions have only scratched the surface (literally and figuratively) of the planet and its geology, geography, and atmosphere. "The surface area of Mars is approximately the same as the total area of the land on Earth," said Masahiro (Hiro) Ono, group lead of the Robotic Surface Mobility Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)--which has led all the Mars rover missions--and one of the researchers who developed the software that allows the current rover to operate.