NASA | JPL-Caltech | AI4Mars | 2020 Jun 12
Using an online tool to label Martian terrain types, you can train an artificial intelligence algorithm that could improve the way engineers guide the Curiosity rover.
You may be able to help NASA's Curiosity rover drivers better navigate Mars. Using the online tool AI4Mars to label terrain features in pictures downloaded from the Red Planet, you can train an artificial intelligence algorithm to automatically read the landscape.
Is that a big rock to the left? Could it be sand? Or maybe it's nice, flat bedrock. AI4Mars, which is hosted on the citizen science website Zooniverse, lets you draw boundaries around terrain and choose one of four labels. Those labels are key to sharpening the Martian terrain-classification algorithm called SPOC (Soil Property and Object Classification).
Developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has managed all of the agency's Mars rover missions, SPOC labels various terrain types, creating a visual map that helps mission team members determine which paths to take. SPOC is already in use, but the system could use further training. ...