A new NASA video explains how its Perseverance Mars rover is using self-driving smarts to move safely across the martian surface.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been trundling across the surface of Mars since arriving on the planet in spectacular fashion in February last year.
In a new video, Tyler Del Sesto, a rover driver and strategic route planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains how Perseverance is using its self-driving smarts to move safely across the martian surface. When NASA’s rover is making its way across long distances between locations of interest, as it is doing now, the team at JPL need only plot a few points for its basic route, leaving the rest to the rover’s “AutoNav” autonomous navigation system.
The rover drivers at JPL are able to access 3D maps — built from images snapped by Perseverance’s left and right cameras — to see how well the rover is performing during its drives on the faraway planet. One big advantage over earlier NASA rovers such as Curiosity is that Perseverance is able to process and analyze captured images while driving, enabling it to complete trips more quickly that its predecessor, which needs to stop, take images, and then process them before choosing a safe route.
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