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Abstract

Much of what we know about our solar system and the universe beyond it we owe to spacecraft like Pioneer and Voyager; orbiters including Hubble, Galileo, and Cassini; robotic landers like Surveyor, Viking, and Huygens; and, of course, the planetary rovers Lunakhod, Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity. Today we recognize these devices as robots with their sensors for guidance and observation, their onboard control avionics, their actuation for locomotion, tracking, and operation, and their interaction, teleoperated and autonomous, with humans. Robotic explorers have