Ein Wüstenfestival, bei dem Roboter der Headliner sind

A 700-pound planetary rover named Helelani is churning thick tires through a flour-like dust. This rover race is part of a new festival called RoboPalooza. It has some trappings of desert festivals, like live rock bands, food trucks & portable toilets.

The difference is this one is sponsored in part by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, focused on building a future for humanity in space. The star performers at this festival are not musicians, but space robots & the people who spend their lives building them.

7 teams from around the world take turns steering this dune-buggy-like rover through the course outside Barstow, California. As the rover weaves through a slalom course of cones, NASA technologist Rob Mueller explains this silty dry lakebed is a pretty good analog for adventures on another planet.

“The unexpected happens out here – dust jamming into a mechanism is not going to happen in a lab. We want to break the robots many times. Fix them, run them again. By the time they get to the moon and Mars, they’ll work. There’s no AAA on the moon. So if we pop a tire, we can’t just go fix it.”

In the exhibit area, the company Astrolab is showing off its squishy all-metal tire meant for moon roving. Kelly Randell, the company manager, explains the tire is intended to conform the moon’s surface, to hug the lunar dirt – & it’s missing the inflatable rubber part for a reason. To fix itself.

NASA’s Opportunity rover, which has traveled farther than any other rover on Mars, rolled about 28 miles over roughly 14 years. Average it out, and that’s a ground speed of about 2 miles per year. Or, as Mueller puts it: “They literally drive at a snail’s pace.”

If a snail were to race one of NASA’s science rovers, Mueller guesses the snail would win – because it doesn’t need to wait for instructions. “The robot needs instructions from people. The crew in mission control sends instructions to the robot, and there’s a time delay on Mars…up to 40 minutes.”