DPRG mailing list archives: [DPRG] offroad robot exercises

Mon Oct 30 18:46:01 CST 2006

Hello David,

Monday, October 30, 2006, 2:06:19 PM, you wrote:

> Hi

> John wrote:

>> Regarding remote kill: Even on an entirely autonomous robot, it 
>> seems that the remote kill is not a command as such, but the lack 
>> of a Run signal. That is, if the robot loses the Run signal (be 
>> it RF or IR or whatever), the drive batteries should be 
>> open-circuited.

> Good question.  I know that the Magellan NASA probe (robot) back in 1989
> when it arrived at Venus, it lost its commnunication link and was not
> heard from for 3 days.  Lots of glum faces at JPL and here in the
> Planetary group at SMU, who had been workin on the project for more than
> a decade.

I would have been more than glum after a decade on a project.

> However, the robot made contact 3 days later and it had dutifully put itself
> in a low power mode and was backing up all data to tape (nothing lost) and had
> been scanning for the earth signal until it found it.

Was it going to call UPS or FedeX to send the tapes back home when it was done backing up?

> So it seems like a REALLY autonomous robot would need to figure out what to
> do on its own if it lost its "run" signal, rather than just shutting itself
> down.

Well one difference I can see is that there is not anyone we know of living on Venus to get injured if it went amuck and went full speed until it broke itself or the batteries died. 

> best
> dpa

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-- 
Best regards,
 Charles                            mailto:cthurston at sc.rr.com