<p>NASA is developing an army of autonomous self-driving robots - equipped with webcams and GPS - that could one day be sent to explore alien surfaces on other planets.<br /><br />The robots, dubbed "swarmies," are much smaller than other NASA robots like the car-sized Mars rover Curiosity.</p>.<p><br />Each comes equipped with a webcam, Wi-Fi antenna, and Global Positioning System (GPS) system for navigation, and the swarmies function in a way similar to an ant colony.<br /><br />When one ant stumbles across a food source, it sends out a signal to the rest of the colony, and then the ants work together to cart the food back to the nest.<br /><br />Engineers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida developed software that directs the swarmies to fan out in different directions and search for a specific, predetermined material, like ice-water on Mars.<br />Once one of the rovers finds something interesting, it can use radio communication to call other robots over to help collect samples, 'SPACE.com' reported.<br /><br />"For a while people were interested in putting as much smarts and capability as they could on their one robot," said Kurt Leucht, one of the engineers working on the project.<br /><br />"Now people are realising you can have much smaller, much simpler robots that can work together and achieve a task. One of them can roll over and die and it's not the end of the mission because the others can still accomplish the task," Leucht said.<br /><br />The swarmie tests are still in the preliminary stages, and currently the robots are only programmed to hunt for barcoded slips of paper.<br /><br />Over the next few months, swarmie tests will also include RASSOR - a mining robot specially designed to dig into alien surfaces and search for interesting or valuable materials.</p>.<p><br />The tests will determine how well the swarming software translates to control other robotic vehicles.</p>
<p>NASA is developing an army of autonomous self-driving robots - equipped with webcams and GPS - that could one day be sent to explore alien surfaces on other planets.<br /><br />The robots, dubbed "swarmies," are much smaller than other NASA robots like the car-sized Mars rover Curiosity.</p>.<p><br />Each comes equipped with a webcam, Wi-Fi antenna, and Global Positioning System (GPS) system for navigation, and the swarmies function in a way similar to an ant colony.<br /><br />When one ant stumbles across a food source, it sends out a signal to the rest of the colony, and then the ants work together to cart the food back to the nest.<br /><br />Engineers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida developed software that directs the swarmies to fan out in different directions and search for a specific, predetermined material, like ice-water on Mars.<br />Once one of the rovers finds something interesting, it can use radio communication to call other robots over to help collect samples, 'SPACE.com' reported.<br /><br />"For a while people were interested in putting as much smarts and capability as they could on their one robot," said Kurt Leucht, one of the engineers working on the project.<br /><br />"Now people are realising you can have much smaller, much simpler robots that can work together and achieve a task. One of them can roll over and die and it's not the end of the mission because the others can still accomplish the task," Leucht said.<br /><br />The swarmie tests are still in the preliminary stages, and currently the robots are only programmed to hunt for barcoded slips of paper.<br /><br />Over the next few months, swarmie tests will also include RASSOR - a mining robot specially designed to dig into alien surfaces and search for interesting or valuable materials.</p>.<p><br />The tests will determine how well the swarming software translates to control other robotic vehicles.</p>