A 4:
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We were concerned about that. I didn't want to have 100 people
looking over my shoulder telling me where to drive to. There were literally 150
scientists in an adjacent area who were giving input like that. But we
decided to formalize the process. And they would prioritize inputs based on
where the Rover had been so far as well as our analysis of the terrain and
various imagery. The scientists could determine that they wanted to get to
a particular rock as a very high priority, and their ideas would all filter
to us in a process, and we would get their inputs all day. Then, as part of
the Rover team, I would analyze the terrain and determine if the Rover was
healthy, checking whether or not it could get there at all, in one day, or
could we just go right over to the rock. And based on that, I would plot
the Rover's path, using the system we created, and tell it to go over
there.
We had all these images come down from Mars, and we were able to display
them, in stereo, and view them on our Onyx2 Infinte Reality, and visualize
the terrain and simulate what the Rover would do if it went a certain
direction. Then I would essentially be able to do several "what-if"
scenarios in real time, with a 3D cursor and analysis of terrain and
terrain models that we created. And we could tell if it was safe for the
Rover to drive in this fashion and get to the rock, and once we did that,
we integrated the motion commands with all the other hundreds of commands
we could tell the Rover, including taking pictures, doing health checks,
checking on system voltage and temperatures, a lot of mundane stuff, but stuff
that was important. And we'd package all that up into a single file with the
sequential Rover commands, and that would get sent through the network,
essentially going through this 70-meter-large dish, one of three of which
are equally spaced around Earth. And the commands were sent through space
on an electrical signal, and finally reached Mars. The Lander would pick
them up and relay them to the Rover via radio modem, and when it was time for
the Rover to wake up it would ask, "What do you have for me today?" and it
would just start doing all it was supposed to do for the whole day.
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