The Mars Rover Curiosity, Is it really a robot, or only remotely controlled?

between the objectives of the Mars technological expertise Laboratory became into to objective to work out if the methane got here upon interior the ambience of Mars became into from a organic geological technique or from bacterial existence, the pattern diagnosis at Mars insturment became into for this besides as different purposes. in the event that they have info that the methane is from existence then that must be for the historic past books. because of this type of momentous discovery they could maximum easily have the records shown by skill of evaluate from others interior the scientific community and this might take it slow. there's a small risk that they have got here upon micro organism yet i think it fairly is going to likely be appropriate to the methane for that's info of existence on yet another planet and the outcomes that existence maximum in all opportunities are high everywhere in the universe, and that we as human beings can say for particular that we are no longer on my own.

both. NASA doesn't care about whether it fits a particular definition of a robot, they just want it to work as efficiently as possible.

It is pre-programmed. It can be driven remotely but there is a huge time delay so real time driving is not happening. They give it a set of instructions and Rover performs them.

While it usually functions autonomously, it is possible for it to be driven remotely.

it is given goals but on board computers 'drive" within limits

there are totally self contained vehicles on earth cars that keep themselves on the road

"drone" aircraft that take off, fly to a point and return

the distinction between remote control and autonomous is getting blurred

It has the capability to autonomously execute orders. It can be instructed to proceed to a given point, but the delays imposed by light lag make it impractical to really "drive" it remotely.