​Curiosity drives solo for first time - Times of India

PTI Sep 2, 2013, 05.33AM IST WASHINGTON: Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity has used autonomous navigation for the first time, a capability that lets the rover decide how to drive safely on the red planet. This latest addition to Curiosity's array of capabilities will help the rover cover the remaining ground en route to Mount Sharp, where geological layers hold information about environmental changes on ancient Mars, Nasa said. The capability uses software that engineers adapted to this larger and more complex vehicle from a similar capability used by Nasa's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity , which is also currently active on Mars. Using autonomous navigation, or autonav, Curiosity can analyse images it takes during a drive to calculate a safe driving path. This enables it to proceed safely even beyond the area that the human rover drivers on Earth can evaluate ahead of time. On August 27, Curiosity used autonomous navigation to drive onto ground that could not be confirmed safe before the start of the drive. This was a first for Curiosity. In a preparatory test Curiosity plotted part of a drive for itself, but kept within an area that operators identified in advance as safe. "Curiosity takes several sets of stereo pairs of images, and the rover's computer processes that information to map any geometric hazard or rough terrain ," said Mark Maimone, rover mobility engineer and rover driver at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , Pasadena, California. via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHcLE0-QOBXGgA224XmR2i_Ri_Yrg&url=http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-02/science/41688047_1_mount-sharp-curiosity-mars-exploration-rover-opportunity

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