Working on Mars: Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers (check website for updates)

(check website for updates)

For more than nine years, scientists have been doing fieldwork on Mars in the first overland investigation of another planet. Working through programmed robotic laboratories, called the Mars Exploration Rovers, they have a virtual experience of being on Mars. The Spirit and Opportunity teams have driven over 28 miles, taken thousands of photographs, analyzed the chemistry of the terrain, and inspected rocks by grinding them and taking microscopic images. And now the Curiosity rover is continuing the work.  How does working remotely through a robotic laboratory change the nature of field science? How does it change the scientists? A cognitive scientist with privileged access to mission operations, Clancey explains that the "robotic geologists" are not the rovers, but the scientists who have imaginatively projected themselves into the body of the machine.   Dr. Clancey will address these issues as well as give us an update on the Mars Curiosity rover.

Speaker: Dr. William Clancey, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition