Meet Mr.Gromit and Mr. K-9!

Robot space explorers are good because

1) they are cheaper than sending astronauts

2) they are easier to maintain - don't get bored, tired, need food, drink or exercise. they don't even need to go to the toilet!!

3) they can be neglected in a cramped space for a long period of time.

4) they can explore dangerous planets and don't need air to breathe.

Therefore, in the pursuit of strong interest on foreign planets like mars, we, human, need these advanced and intelligent robot space explorers to explore the unknown planets.

The renowned NASA then has came out with two robotic heros - Mr. Gromit and Mr. K-9. A smart robots, they claimed to be.

Mr Gromit

A red little cubic, four-wheeled robot. Though it is small size, Mr. Gromit can navigate a rock-strewn patch of land at a stately pace of 5 centimeters (2 inches) per second. While navigating, Mr Gromit can communicate with researchers back in the lab. Most surprisingly, it can obey dutifully to the commands tasked to him.

Mr. K-9

Mr. K-9, who is smarter and twice as fast than Mr. Gromit, uses its own built-in intelligence to navigate across the simulated Martian terrain and wheel around obstacles He is a born photographer, taking pictures of the rocks and analyzing their composition with half-minute pauses for reasoned reflection while on the trundling. Similar to Mr. Gromit, this crane-like, six wheeled robot also obeyed commands given.

So why them?

These two robots are much more complex and intelligent. In tandem of that, they are loaded with combinations of sophisticated software, cameras, spectrometers and global positioning system location-finders. In addition, they can build habitat for future human pioneering and specified the promising areas for joint human-machine exploration. The intelligence point is their ability to gauge the danger level of certain terrain. For example, they can feedback earth's researchers that the a certain region is safe for the machine, but not for human. What a caring robots, ya?

With more and more researchs weighing on the robot explorer, it is just a matter of time that these robots can eventually fully explore the Mars, build a civilisation on it and operate a "Matrix" world like us!

Koh Ling Ying

U046245W

References: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?=/c/a/2005/10/04/MNGM7F25CD1.DTL&type=science