Can A Robot Draw A Map

On a dry lakebed in the Mojave desert, a small experimental rover named Zoe wanders back and forth between dusty clay sediments and black fields of basaltic lava, belched out during eruptions that formed the nearby cinder cone, Amboy Crater.

Atop a small rise in the landscape, in the shade of a six-foot-square canopy, a quartet of researchers sit in folding chairs, portable computers on their laps, alternately scanning screens of status data transmitted by Zoe, discussing the robot's behavior, and writing on-the-spot patches to its control software.

Zoe carries with it, on a hard disk, a crude map of the region it's exploring, based on data collected by ASTER, an infrared spectrometer onboard NASA's Earth Observing Satellite.

Zoe's goal is to produce a more-detailed map that clearly defines the boundaries between areas of the terrain dominated by clay and those dominated by basalt. It would be a relatively simple matter for a field geologist to do this work. But what the Carnegie Mellon University researchers who are part of this Science on the Fly experiment want to know is: can a robot can do it too? ...

The Daily Space