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World on brink of new era of exploration
Wolfgang Fink, currently a visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology, said the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today. "The way we explore tomorrow will be unlike any cup of tea we've ever tasted," Fink said. "We are departing from traditional approaches of a single robotic spacecraft with no redundancy that is Earth-commanded to one that allows for having multiple, expendable low-cost robots.…"
He said such robots will command other robots.
"One day an entire fleet of robots will be autonomously commanded at once," Fink said. This armada of robots will be our eyes, ears, arms and legs in space, in the air and on the ground, capable of responding to their environment without us, to explore and embrace the unknown."
Papers describing such new exploration are published in the journals Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine and The Proceedings of the SPIE.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International
This news arrived on: 10/28/2009
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Posted Comments:
10-29-2009 12:00
Anthony Moore wrote:
Robots
Visions of "Battlestar Galactica"?
10-29-2009 07:42
Charles M. Barnard wrote:
Robots
He is, of coure, correct. This has been known to be the future of space exploration for many years now.
More than just commanding other robots, they will set about creating new robots out of local materials in an ever expanding network of self-replicating explorers.
Unless we find a way around the limitations of travel speed, this is the only practical way for us to explore the Universe, since it is a n incredible waste to send humans on a generations long voyage without certain knowledge that they can survive on the other end.
Of course, within the Solar System, the delay between robot exploration and human colonization will bwe much, much shorter.
Which is good, because the resources in the Solar System make the resource of the entire Earth (and we only use about 1% of that,) minuscule in comparison.
In energy alone, there is more passing through our small binary planetary system of the Earth-Luna every hour than our civilization has used in 5,000 years.
More than just commanding other robots, they will set about creating new robots out of local materials in an ever expanding network of self-replicating explorers.
Unless we find a way around the limitations of travel speed, this is the only practical way for us to explore the Universe, since it is a n incredible waste to send humans on a generations long voyage without certain knowledge that they can survive on the other end.
Of course, within the Solar System, the delay between robot exploration and human colonization will bwe much, much shorter.
Which is good, because the resources in the Solar System make the resource of the entire Earth (and we only use about 1% of that,) minuscule in comparison.
In energy alone, there is more passing through our small binary planetary system of the Earth-Luna every hour than our civilization has used in 5,000 years.
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