MARS ROVER
In
the summer of 1997 a NASA mission lander a space probe on the surface of Mars.
Included in the probe was a vehicle which could be used to explore the planet's
surface. This Rover was controlled from Earth at the Jet Propulsion Lab in
California using a virtual reality system.
Because the communications lag was approximately 20 minutes in each direction, the vehicle was not controlled in real time. The operator could plan an exploration using a head mounted display and a simulation of the area around the probe. The simulation was produced from photographs which were transmitted back to earth. After the operator has driven the simulated vehicle around the simulated surface, the sequence of commands was sent to the probe on Mars where the Rover carried them out independently.
The lander and the Rover both returned a number of images. Many of these provide a stereoscopic view using the Red-Green technique. Two examples are shown here and may be viewed with the two color glasses provided for 3D movies and comics.
