The arrival at Mars of two U.S. robotic rovers -- the first of which, Spirit, landed on the Red Planet's surface late Saturday -- could spur a new wave of enthusiasm for robotic exploration.

	Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette
	Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Illah Nourbakhsh of Carnegie Mellon University, with a Personal Exploration Rover.

And roboticist Illah Nourbakhsh of Carnegie Mellon University is doing what he can to make it so.

Though not directly involved in the Mars Exploration Rover mission, Nourbakhsh has led the development of a fleet of smaller, cheaper robots, called Personal Exploration Rovers, that will give members of the public a hands-on opportunity to see what robotic discovery is all about.

The personal rovers are part of Mars exhibits that will operate in conjunction with the Mars rover mission at some of the nation's top science museums. The first exhibit opened last week at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.

But Nourbakhsh, as well as his sponsors at NASA and Intel Corp., also hope the personal rovers may evolve into an educational tool that will continue in use long after the Mars mission ends.

"Lots of high schools would love to have rovers like this in the curriculum," said Nourbakhsh, noting that the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research Development Center is doing an independent evaluation of the robots' educational benefits. "It's not a toy."

If Spirit's twin rover, Opportunity, also manages to land safely, their three-month misson could boost interest in both planetary science and robotic exploration, if the experience of their predecessor, Sojourner, is any guide. During Sojourner's 12-week Pathfinder mission in 1997, the mission Web site received almost 750 million hits at a time when the Internet's popularity was still dawning.

Working on opposite sides of the planet, the two rovers will look for geological evidence of water -- either water that once existed, or water that may still lie just below the Martian surface.

The six-wheeled MER robots are bigger and more robust than Sojourner. Each is the size of a golf cart and weighs about 400 pounds. Unlike the Mars Pathfinder mission, which had scientific instruments on both Sojourner and its lander, all of the instruments being used in the MER mission are on board the two robots.

The six-wheeled Personal Exploration Rovers are just 1.2 feet tall and weigh only 10 pounds, but they have capabilities similar to their larger brethren. Like the Mars rovers, the personal rovers can navigate on their own from one spot to another, using an optical range finder to detect obstacles. Each has a camera with a custom-designed head that can provide panoramic, 360-degree images of its surroundings.

A key part of the rover is its computer, designed especially for small, mobile robots by Intel. The entire computer, including processors and memory, is built onto a single computer board, providing both high performance and low power consumption.

The rovers can operate for up to 10 hours without recharging, Nourbakhsh said. "That's something we couldn't do even three years ago," he added.

In the museum exhibits, the rovers negotiate "Mars yards" meant to simulate the Martian surface. Visitors will use the rovers to scan the rocks and soil for signs of life. The rovers are designed to look for organic molecules that fluoresce when illuminated with ultraviolet light.

This scenario for detecting life is similar to the approach that NASA and Carnegie Mellon scientists are using in Chile's Atacama Desert. The dry Chilean desert is serving as a stand-in for Mars as the researchers develop instruments and robotic technology that could eventually be used to look for signs of Martian life.

Nourbakhsh and his colleagues are building 20 of the personal rovers, enough to provide five museums with three rovers each and leave some extras for further research. In addition to Ames, the robots are being installed in Washington, D.C., at the National Air and Space Museum and at the museum's new Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport. Exhibits also will open this month at the San Francisco Exploratorium and the National Science Center in Augusta, Ga.

At last week's opening at the Ames Research Center, the personal rovers proved durable and were well-received by the first-day visitors, said Daniel Clancy, the center's director of information sciences and technology.

If the exhibits prove successful, Nourbakhsh hopes to secure additional funding for a traveling exhibit that might visit the Carnegie Science Center and other sites. A number of museums, including some overseas, already have expressed interest, he noted, and NASA already has asked him to build another 20 rovers.

But he has a grander vision for the personal rovers.

"To my thinking, this could be the robotic equivalent to the Apple II computer," Nourbakhsh said. The Apple II was slow and crude compared with today's personal computers. "But it was a new, creative outlet for my generation," he maintained, and helped many students learn about logic, problem solving and the scientific method.

A student might use such a rover to study something as simple as a hole in the back yard; the rover could be programmed to camp out in front of the hole and, when something in it moves, take a picture of it.

"The idea isn't building just one robot," Clancy said. Rather, NASA hopes the project spawns a whole line of personal rovers, each of which could be customized according to the needs and resources of the user. Cost wasn't a major concern for the museum exhibits, he noted, "but if you're talking about a high school, there's a big difference between a $1,500 device and a $500 device."

Clancy said the hope is that educators and students will be able to find interesting things to do with the new tool and that eventually the rover technology will make its way into the home as well.

"It's clear that in the next five to eight years that a much broader use of robots will occur," Clancy said.

For more information

Personal Exploration Rover Web site: www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~personalrover/PER/

Mars Exploration Rover Web site: marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov