Do Robots Have Brains?

According to NASA, the Mars rover Opportunity is getting smarter as it is getting older. The rover has greatly exceeded its expected lifespan, and it is now in its seventh year, so NASA took the liberty of installing some new software over the winter. Now Opportunity is capable of making its own decisions about the objects it wants to explore. The new technology is called AEGIS, which stands for Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science.

With the upgrade, Opportunity's wide-angle navigation camera can take pictures of the surrounding rocks and determine if the rocks meet specific criteria. For instance, it can look for a light-colored rock, and then it can use its narrow-angle panoramic camera to focus in on a specific rock and take pictures of it through three different filters. During a trial run, Opportunity found exactly the rock that the scientists wanted it to find.

Maybe if robots can start thinking on their own, like Opportunity, we will not need to send astronauts to the Red Planet. I wonder if this takes away from NASA's goals of reaching Mars and studying it. I mean, we still have dreams of actually setting foot on Mars, but if the robots can make their own decisions, maybe NASA will decide not to try to send humans to Mars. As NASA researcher Bret Drake said, "We're still looking at human exploration of Mars as one of the goals of the future at the top level."

Here is an article from Fox News on how NASA proposes to travel to Mars, where you can read more from Bret Drake.