Cooperating rover system

Currently there are two rovers operating on Mars. Why two of them? Since probes to Mars can be launched only every 26 months, sending two at the same time doubles the chance for success. In the future, maybe next launching, there will be more that two rovers operating at the same time on Mars. The AI control among the rovers will be another issue to be concerned. AI will play an important role in cooperating among rovers.

Our idea is to design a rover system inside of a single rover.

The rover system is constituted of a Master rover and several Slave rovers of which the numbers vary depending on different mission aims. We shall call the master rover the 'mother ship'

The slave rovers are task specified, they have all the basic features that a current rover possesses:

1. Imaging, video, sound recording
2. Collection of Rock minerals.
3. Equipped with navigation cameras, lithium rechargeable batteries.

They also have different special skills on dealing with different situation. Such as walking, or drilling.

The Mother ship has the capabilities of:

1. Collecting large amount of solar energy with its foldable solar panels.
2. Equipped with a much more powerful and stable computer than current rover.
3. For most of the cases, it will not perform any searching tasks. Instead it will use its testing and analysing equipment to analyse the samples taken by the small rovers.
4. The mother ship is the centre of communications as well. It allows the earth to navigate the Slave rovers through its communications system.
5. With its onboard powerful computer, it controls the slave rovers and reprogram them based on runtime information on Mars.
6. It also owns the ability of exchange information with other Master rovers if one rover system is not enough.
7. It is wheel driven and can travel with the Slave rovers to a desired destination, and let the Slave rovers to collect samples.