Scientists want to send ‘swarms’ of robots to search for life on Mars - The Independent

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Scientists want to send a “swarm” of robots to look for life on Mars.

The VaMEx project, run by the German space agency, hopes that sending a variety of different robots to the surface of the Red Planet could allow them to work together to navigate the complex terrain of the Red Planet. Mars presents a host of different challenges, including the fact that there are no satellites for mapping, like on Earth, and that messages can take more than 20 minutes to send between any robot there and engineers at home.

The researchers hope that the different kinds of robots could work together to operate on their own, exploring the Martian surface in search of signs of alien life. They hope to send the swarm to the Valles Marineris valley on Mars, examining it from both the air and the ground, as well as heading into the caves that are thought to exist in the valley.

The project, known as VaMEx and funded by the German Space Agency, has been running since 2012. But it has now reached its fourth development phase, allowing for more detailed work on how exactly the hardware and software that powers the robots could work.

One of those key focuses is the SkyCAM system, which is intended to look up at the sky, sending back data on phenomena such as lightning, clouds or even unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs. That system is being prepared to be sent on the AMADEE-27 analogue mission, for instance, which will recreate conditions on Mars during a test next year in Portugal.

The researchers hope to send two or three of the SkyCAM stations, allowing them to record the sky and send data to each other. Researchers hope that will not only provide a better understanding of the sky above Mars, but also let them use the data to help navigate other robots in the swarm.

Other work is aimed to building robots that can orientate themselves on Mars. Without navigation satellites, the researchers hope to build a navigation system that will instead combine data from sensors that can see the stars with position data taken through a network of radio beacons.

By combining that data, the project hopes to be able to build robots that are able to work out where they are, and where they are travelling, entirely on their own, no matter what the terrain.