These breadcrumbs, however, are rather high-tech.
An illustration of a breadcrumb-following rover exploring a lava tube on Mars as its"mother" waits for it at the cave entrance.
The breadcrumbs-following flock of robots devised by researchers at the University of Arizona College of Engineering could explore subsurface regions onincluding caves and lava vents. This exploration could help scout out locations that could go on to be used by astronauts stationed on the Red Planet for long-term missions.
"One of the new aspects is what we call opportunistic deployment — the idea that you deploy the 'breadcrumbs' when you have to and not according to a previously planned schedule," Fink said.The robot flock would have a mother unit, and while input from this commanding unit won't be needed, a subordinate unit in the flock could determine if it needs guidance.
"They can switch between each other and compensate for dead spots and signal blackouts," research co-author and senior research scientist in Fink's laboratory, Mark Tarbell, said."If some of them die, there still is connectivity through the remaining nodes, so the mother rover never loses connection to the farthest node in the network."
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