(2 of 2)
That skill will be crucial if a Dante-like robot is sent to another world. On Mars, for example, says Lavery, contact would probably be limited to once a < day, and even then the enormous distances would result in a minimum 10-minute time lag in communications. Dante II is not quite smart enough for full autonomy, but considering that it took less than a year to design and build, it is remarkably close to self-sufficient. Says Lavery: "The consensus was, if we had another four or five months, we would have had that ability."
Another barrier to sending robots to the planets is weight: every pound you launch into space is expensive. At nearly a ton, Dante II would break the bank. Whittaker is already thinking about lighter models, though. And while NASA's Lavery cautions that Dante II is still "far from any sort of flight opportunity," he acknowledges that much of the technology used aboard Dante II will probably find its way into future space missions. In fact, NASA wants to launch a robot explorer toward Mars as early as 1996. And a private company working with Carnegie Mellon scientists hopes to send a Dante-like robot to the moon in 1997. The purely commercial purpose: to gather images for a gamelike, virtual-reality tour across the lunar surface.
In the meantime, Dante II-type robots should be in hot demand from earthbound volcanologists, 11 of whom have died exploring active craters in the past few years. As for Dante III, or whatever Whittaker calls the next generation, its task will be to spare humans from facing even greater dangers on other worlds.