Opportunistic Adaptation in Space-Based Robot Colonies: Application to Site Preparation

Abstract

A necessary precursor to the human exploration of Mars is a continuously operating robot colony that can function successfully over a period of years. Such a robot colony would be useful not only in increasing our knowledge about Mars, but also in paving the way for human exploration by deploying the infrastructure needed to support humans. For these robot colonies to be successful over a long period of time, they must be able to opportunistically adapt to their environment and the robot colony conguration, responding reliably to the dynamic changes that will inevitably occur over time. This paper explores these issues in the context of robot colonies for the site preparation task { a task identied by NASA as an important precursor to human missions to Mars. We identify the important issues driving the need for opportunistic adaptation in site preparation and describe our planned approach to addressing this task, along with our planned robot experiments. KEYWORDS: Multi...