Deep learning helps future Mars Rovers go farther, faster, and do more science

aarondubrow writes: NASA JPL are developing autonomous capabilities that could allow future Mars rovers to go farther, faster and do more science. Training machine learning models on the Maverick2 supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, their team developed and optimized models for Drive-By Science and Energy-Optimal Autonomous Navigation. The team presented results of their work at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in March 2020. The project was a finalist for the NASA Software Award.

Where we're at with Mars exploration

[aarondubrow]

"Imagine, you're an alien and you know almost nothing about Earth, and you land on seven or eight points on Earth and drive a few hundred kilometers. Does that alien species know enough about Earth?" Ono asked. "No. If we want to represent the huge diversity of Mars we'll need more measurements on the ground, and the key is substantially extended distance, hopefully covering thousands of miles."