Editing Autonomous robot (section)

===Space probes===
The Mars rovers [[MER-A]] and [[MER-B]] (now known as [[Spirit rover|''Spirit'' rover]] and [[Opportunity rover|''Opportunity'' rover]]) found the position of the Sun and navigated their own routes to destinations, on the fly, by:

* Mapping the surface with 3D vision
* Computing safe and unsafe areas on the surface within that field of vision
* Computing optimal paths across the safe area towards the desired destination
* Driving along the calculated route
* Repeating this cycle until either the destination is reached, or there is no known path to the destination

The planned [[ESA]] Rover, [[Rosalind Franklin (rover)|''Rosalind Franklin'' rover]], is capable of vision based relative localisation and absolute localisation to autonomously navigate safe and efficient trajectories to targets by:

* [[3D reconstruction|Reconstructing 3D models]] of the terrain surrounding the Rover using a pair of stereo cameras
* Determining safe and unsafe areas of the terrain and the general "difficulty" for the Rover to navigate the terrain
* Computing efficient paths across the safe area towards the desired destination
* Driving the Rover along the planned path
* Building up a navigation map of all previous navigation data

During the final NASA Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge in 2016, a rover, named Cataglyphis, successfully demonstrated fully autonomous navigation, decision-making, and sample detection, retrieval, and return capabilities.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challenges/feature/2016_sample_return_robot_challenge_award.html|title=NASA Awards $750K in Sample Return Robot Challenge|last=Hall|first=Loura|date=2016-09-08|access-date=2016-09-17}}</ref> The rover relied on a fusion of measurements from [[inertial sensor]]s, wheel encoders, Lidar, and camera for navigation and mapping, instead of using GPS or magnetometers. During the 2-hour challenge, Cataglyphis traversed over 2.6&nbsp;km and returned five different samples to its starting position.