

'Cubli' - the cube
that can walk, jump and balance Cubli uses two manoeuvres to jump from its
resting position to one of its edges and then balance on one of its corners.
The mechanical device can detect disturbances to adjust its position while
balancing on its corner (illustrated) and also rotate NASA wants to give future rovers a small electronic brain perfect for asteroids. As impressive as the Mars Curiosity’s findings have been, the
rover just doesn't have the brains to cut it further out in the solar system. This
is because, at the start of each Martian day, Nasa has to deal with a
significant communication delay when it sends its agenda to the Mars rover. Even
moving at light speed, instructions from Earth take about 20 minutes to reach
the surface of Mars. This 40-minute round trip makes real-time control of the
rover impossible On Jupiter's moon Europa, where astrobiologists suspect
extraterrestrial life could exist, the delay balloons to over 90 minutes.

But an
‘intelligent’ camera that can not only take pictures of alien rock, but also
analyse them and draw intelligent conclusions about what to do next is hoping
to change all that. named ‘TextureCam’, the two-lens device snaps 3D images and
a special processor, separate from the rover's main computer, analyses the
pictures. By recognising textures in the photos, the processor distinguishes
between sand, rocks and sky. The processor then uses the size and distance to
rocks in the picture to determine if any are scientifically important layered
rocks. When the Texture Cam spots an interesting rock, it can either upload a
high-resolution image back to Earth or send a message to the main processor to
move toward the rock and take a sample. It works similarly to the facial unlock
feature available on smartphones and computers. The more examples of
interesting rocks it was shown, the better it becomes at identifying the common
features that make rocks scientifically important. Recently TextureCam was
successfully run through its paces in the rocky landscape of the Mojave Desert
in Southern California—a useful test environment for the Martian surface.
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