Robotic astrobiology - enhancing scientific productivity of planetary rover missions

这个提议包括尝试在未来的行星探测器上提供一个复杂的机器人科学家设备。特别是，火星因其潜在的天体生物学而引起人们的兴趣，但火星是遥远的。从地球到火星表面的通信窗口是零星和短暂的。这使得火星探测器变得更加智能至关重要，尤其是因为它们是地球上科学家的代理。如果我们不赋予探测器足够的科学智能，它可能会错过重要的科学现象。该提案试图通过使漫游者足够聪明，能够自己做出科学决定来纠正这一问题。这将涉及图像处理、专家系统和学习神经网络的复杂相互作用，以模拟人类科学家的思维方式。当然，这并不是要取代人类地质学家或天体生物学家，而只是增强他们的能力。在人类宇航员登陆火星之前，这些探测器是我们的代理，代表我们进行科学调查。通过增强他们的科学能力，我们可以最大限度地提高他们的科学生产力，这样我们就可以更多地了解这些地外环境，最终了解火星上是否存在或曾经存在生命。目前，很少有人从事这方面的工作，因此这为加拿大的工程师和科学家提供了一个在这一领域处于领先地位的机会。随着未来的漫游者任务变得更加复杂和苛刻，它将变得越来越重要。

This proposal involves attempting to provide a sophisticated robotic scientist facility onboard future planetary rovers. In particular, Mars is of interest for its astrobiological potential but Mars is remote and distant. The communications windows to the Martian surface from Earth are sporadic and fleeting. This makes making a Mars rover smarter essential especially since they are proxies for scientists on Earth. If we do not impart sufficient scientific intelligence to the rover, it may miss important scientific phenomena. This proposal seeks to redress that by making the rover smart enough to make scientific decisions on its own. This will involve a complex interplay of image processing, expert systems and learning neural networks to model how a human scientist thinks. This is not to replace the human geologist or astrobiologist of course, merely to augment them. Until human astronauts land on Mars, these rovers are our proxies, performing scientific investigations on our behalf. By giving them enhanced scientific capabilities, we can maximise their scientific productivity so we can learn more about these extraterrestrial environments, and ultimately, whether life does, or has, existed on Mars. Currently, very few people are working on this aspect so this offers an opportunity for Canadian engineers and scientists to take the lead in this field. It will become increasingly important as future rover missions become more sophisticated and demanding.