Eyes on Mars

Charles Darwin described human eyes as ‘organs of extreme perfection’. While robotic vision has far to go before it matches the human eye’s natural guile, it is growing increasingly sophisticated, thanks to the power of cameras and other sensors that help robots see and interact with their surroundings. The leading cybernetic ‘eye’ belongs to the 2020 rover – a Nasa contraption slated to launch on July 17, 2020 and touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on February 18, 2021.

Armed with visionary science instruments, the rover recently had an ‘eye test’ in an Icelandic lava field after several cameras were fitted to it. The visionary vehicle with 20/20 vision boasts imaging capabilities ranging from narrow-angle, high-resolution zoom lens cameras to wide-angle landscape cameras.