I had planned to comment on a topic in Robotics, in particular, human form robots.
But I can’t let the day pass without remarking on the unbelievable achievement of the Ingenuity team and their first successful powered flight on another planet. It boggles the mind to consider the complexities of being successful.
Consider the physical constraints of the environment: dust everywhere, bathed in radiation, thin air (to put it mildly), extreme cold—and no pilot to make real-time corrections. Imagine—the pilot sending the instructions for the flight, which are executed sometime in the future, and then waiting until after the flight is completed to see results.
Not to mention testing a helicopter that can’t actually be flown in a Mars environment here on Earth. The team could replicate the atmosphere, but gravity was another thing altogether. Using simulation and a tethering system that approximated Martian gravity got them close. The real test is flying it on Mars, and today we learned they got it right. I can’t imagine what that would be like. I remember sleepless nights before we were just putting a new application into production from my IT management days, and I could test every little thing. It is a testament to the genius of the team that this first flight was successful.
If you haven’t seen it, check out this historic flight – Ingenuity Flight.
It was all of about 25 seconds, just over twice as long as the Wright Brother’s first flight. But they’ve proved it can be done. It’s no longer a hypothetical possibility. And from the last reports, Ingenuity is in good shape. So—more flights, more practice, more data, and more to learn.
One last word, though—this is about robots, too. Quite a few robots, actually, just not human form robots. If you consider a robot a device that can autonomously carry out complex activities, then we’ve seen the collaboration of several robots: Ingenuity, Perseverance, MAVEN, the MRO, and the whole Mars Relay Network—while the human members of the team waited patiently(?) for the results.
Thank you to the Ingenuity team for your willingness to Dare Mighty Things and for letting us ride along.