 Rocky IV, small, lightweight, versatile, is the latest in a series of planetary rovers that tests the possibility of exploring the surfaces of other planets with robots. This is Robby, an earlier rover experiment. Robby is as long as a pickup truck and weighs two tons. It is not meant for space travel, but is a valuable test bed for semi-autonomous navigation concepts. Rocky III, closer to the idea of a real space explorer, weighs about 56 pounds. This mini rover evolved from many years of robotics and automation development at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Small but capable, planetary rovers have been made possible by the development of micro technologies from computer chips to sensors. Dr. Lonnie Lane. The plan is to have a rover of this kind, about 7 kilograms, 15-16 pounds, built for a small lander in the measure system to be able to do these kinds of tasks for scientific and exploration. Rocky's final performance test was on a rock-strewn Mars-like location in a dry riverbed near JPL in Pasadena, California. In the background is a surveyor spacecraft of the type that landed on the moon 25 years ago. This demonstration celebrates that historic surveyor landing. A camera on the lander notes locations and is used by the operators to select targets for the rover. When viewed with special goggles, the images appear in three dimensions. The operator designates a series of waypoints for Rocky to follow on its way to the target rock. Activities are programmed in Rocky's onboard computer and they are triggered by the operator's command. First, the rover will deploy a seismometer, a fully functional micro device, sensitive enough to detect the billionth of a G needed to feel a Mars quake. The smallest quake a human can feel is about eight one-thousandths of a G, so the instrument is 125 billion times more sensitive than a human being. We're ready to go? Hey, we're ready to go. Launch. As Rocky travels between points, the operator has identified. It is guided by a new computing technique called behavior control. Sensors tell Rocky about its pitch and roll and modifies the vehicle direction to avoid dangerous situations. The rover's camera scans the view ahead and Rocky moves to its next task to chip the weathered surface from a rock so a sensitive spectrometer can determine the content of the rock. Next, Rocky has to collect a soil sample and deliver it to the lander where it will be analyzed by science instruments. Rocky IV is a prototype for an even smaller, lighter rover, one that will weigh only about 11 pounds. It will carry science instruments capable of testing the surface and atmosphere of Mars. That rover will be sent to Mars as mankind's science emissary in 1996 as part of a NASA mission called Pathfinder.