The particular characteristics of Mars rover operations require a significant level of rover autonomy and an ability to handle resource constraints and unpredictable events. We have designed an integrated architecture for rovers that includes contingency planning on ground and flexible, robust execution of conditional sequences on board. The onboard executive draws on model-based fault diagnosis, active sensing, and dynamic resource management to maximize its science return.

In the future, we would like to see rovers that are capable of even higher levels of autonomous operations. These rovers will accept very high-level goals from human operators and will be able to achieve those goals with no further supervision, even in dynamic and uncertain environments.

These rovers will be self-diagnosing and self-repairing; they will be capable of detecting gradual degradation, adjusting internal parameters accordingly, and performing preventive maintenance to avoid catastrophic failure. For example, solar panels accumulate dust over time and are gradually damaged by UV; the ability of the rover to execute a plan will be dependent on its gradually decreasing energy production, and it may need to perform actions to remove dust periodically when operating over long time intervals. In addition to expected and predictable degradation, rovers will be able to automatically replan when unexpected problems occur or serendipitous opportunities arise. We are building toward this vision in our research on robust autonomous rovers. It is reasonable to expect such capabilities in future generations of rovers.