Robotic Nation Evidence

Spirit Stands Down for Flight Software Update

In both Robotic Nation and this blog, I talk a great deal about advancing robotic technology. Robots will be gaining new capabilities in the coming years as computers get faster and algorithms improve.

One interesting aspect of these advances is the fact that they can often be accomplished through field upgrades on existing robotic hardware. The Mars rover named Spirit received such an upgrade recently. According to the article:

The flight software update package includes three key changes. First is an update to the autonomous navigation software that will allow Spirit to travel longer distances autonomously over the extremely rocky Gusev Crater terrain.

The current autonomous navigation software sometimes gets stuck when it detects a hazard that it can't navigate around. The new version will allow Spirit to turn in place to find the best possible path.

The second part of the flight software update will allow Spirit to recover more easily from an anomaly like the one that occurred on sol 18. Although operational processes and software have already been updated to prevent something like this from ever happening again, engineers have included additional safety nets in the software that would allow the rover to autonomously react to a similar anomaly and recover to a more stable state.

The third portion of the update is specific to Opportunity and is intended to mitigate against energy loss associated with the stuck heater on Opportunity's instrument deployment device.

This ability to upgrade in the field can make robots more flexible than humans in lots of situations. Imagine, for example, a situation where the army has 100,000 soldiers deployed on a battlefield and things are not going well. There is no easy way to retrain 100,000 soldiers on the fly. If they are robotic soldiers instead, the Army can upgrade them all in a few minutes.