They just want to be able to pre-erase all those pesky UFO, ET and fossil shots.
Posted on 09/11/2013 12:18:50 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Curiosity can autonomously zero in on the rocks it needs to take pictures, but has to beam the pictures to Earth for the scientists to do the analysis remotely. If Curiosity is out of range of a Mars orbiter, the uploads are painfully slow – about 250 times slower than what a human on Earth encounters on a typical 3G cell phone network.
TextureCam would instead take a 3D picture of the rock using stereo cameras. A processor, not linked to the rover's main computer, would then scan the picture for textures, allowing the machine to figure out the difference between rocks, sand and the background sky.
The processor could also determine the size of rocks and their distance, as well as if there are any layers that could be important for science analysis. It would then prioritize its messages to Earth, selecting the most interesting targets to send back to controllers.
"You do have to provide it with some initial training, just like you would with a human, where you give it example images of what to look for," Wagstaff said. "But once it knows what to look for, it can make the same decisions we currently do on Earth."
The technology could fly on the NASA's 2020 Mars rover mission, or on trips to more distant destinations like Europa, project scientists said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Probably even more useful for robots on earth since communication is nearly instantaneous.
They just want to be able to pre-erase all those pesky UFO, ET and fossil shots.
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