Autonomous systems help NASA's Perseverance do more science on Mars
In about a third of the time it would have taken other NASA Mars rovers, Perseverance recently navigated its way through a field of boulders more than 1,700 feet wide (about a half-kilometer). While planners map out the rover's general routes, Perseverance managed the finer points of navigating the field, nicknamed "Snowdrift Peak," on its own, courtesy of AutoNav, the self-driving system that h