Zoe, The Search For Life Robot
August 10, 2005 | In: Artificial Intelligence, Remote Control, Robots Cyborgs
To boldly go where no kids wagon has gone before. It appears NASA is readying their next generation robot to search for life on the red planet.
A 3-year NASA project to test a “search-for-life” robot will soon come to an end, but not before one last trip to the Chilean desert. “Zoe,” a solar-powered rover that resembles a go-cart, is a prototype of an artificially intelligent astro-biologist, or a robot that can explore and study life in harsh climates. It’s been developed and tested by Carnegie Mellon University and NASA’s Ames Research Center, which expects to use the underlying technology in future Mars missions. Zoe and a team of researchers will leave in two weeks for a third and final mission to the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the robot will travel alone across about 110 miles in two months, studying the driest desert on Earth.
Do they know something we don’t? Why would we, who live on this pristine planet full of nice people and limitless natural resources, ever want to live on another planet? If everything is all right here, then NASA has one hell of an expensive curiosity.
[via ZDNet]
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