World on brink of new era of exploration

PASADENA, Calif., Oct. 28 (UPI) -- A University of Arizona professor says the world is on the brink of a new era in planetary exploration, with armadas of robots exploring the universe.

Wolfgang Fink, currently a visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology, said the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today. "The way we explore tomorrow will be unlike any cup of tea we've ever tasted," Fink said. "We are departing from traditional approaches of a single robotic spacecraft with no redundancy that is Earth-commanded to one that allows for having multiple, expendable low-cost robots.…"

He said such robots will command other robots.

"One day an entire fleet of robots will be autonomously commanded at once," Fink said. This armada of robots will be our eyes, ears, arms and legs in space, in the air and on the ground, capable of responding to their environment without us, to explore and embrace the unknown."

Papers describing such new exploration are published in the journals Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine and The Proceedings of the SPIE.