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11.3.2021 7 OPINION Alexiei Dingli Prof Alexiei Dingli is a Professor of AI at the University of Malta and has been conducting research and working in the field of AI for more than two decades, assisting different companies to implement AI solutions. He forms part of the Malta.AI task-force, set up by the Maltese government, aimed at making Malta one of the top AI countries in the world Y ou might be surprised to learn that very close to us, there exists a planet governed by robots. No human beings live over there. The pop- ulation is still relatively small, with only five robots on it, but it is growing stead- ily. This location is none other than our sister planet Mars. In reality, the American National Aeronautics and Space Administra- tion (NASA) sent a total of seven rov- ers to the red planet since 1971, but two of them never completed their journey. Out of the other 5, Sojourn- er lost communication three months after landing (1997), Spirit worked for six years (till 2010), but its wheels got trapped in sand, and Opportunity en- tered into hibernation (2018) due to a bad dust storm. The last two, Curiosi- ty (2012) and Perseverance (2021), are still in operation. The Perseverance rover is, without doubt, the most advanced of the lot and uses sophisticated Artificial In- telligence (AI) even though its proces- sor is less powerful than your mobile phone! The reason for choosing a 90s pro- cessor is because Mars' atmosphere offers far less protection from harmful radiation and charged particles than Earth's atmosphere. Using an older and less complicated chip can reduce the chances of things going wrong. However, this doesn't stop Persever- ance from doing some pretty incred- ible stuff. First of all, it managed to fly a 300-million-mile voyage from Earth. The landing is the most crucial part, so much so that they call it "the 7 minutes of terror". The touchdown was dangerous because of the cliffs and sand-dunes located in the landing spot's vicinity; however, the AI-en- abled Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) came to the rescue. Its onboard camera took several images of the de- scent; the AI recognised the space- craft's location and steered it towards a safe landing spot. The TRN man- aged to land Perseverance within less than 40 meters of the agreed landing site. Such an AI was critical because, in those 7 minutes, the spacecraft is on its own, and any corrective com- mands sent from Planet Earth would not reach it in time (since it can take up to 40 minutes). AI will help Perseverance in its sci- entific mission too. The Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science system (AEGIS) is an intelli- gent targeting software that autono- mously spots curious rocks. It then al- lows scientists to fire a powerful laser to any position within a seven-meter radius, which vaporises part of the surface and uses the ChemCam or SuperCam camera to analyse their el- emental composition. The latest Mars rover is also a self-driving vehicle. The AI can con- tinuously drive the rover around the planet while taking pictures, perform- ing experiments and avoiding obsta- cles. Another exciting feature of this new rover is the possibility of drill- ing in the Martian surface, collecting the soil, and placing the samples in- side tubes. The Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will then collect these tubes around 2030 and launch them back to Earth. Perseverance also boasts a small drone helicopter called Ingenuity. It can fly up to 5 meters above ground for up to 90 seconds per flight and as far as 50 meters away. Although its flights will be well-scripted, it can use autonomous control, thus allowing the AI to pilot it. Even though the "planet of the Ro- bots" is not an Alien contact, we might have already encountered some real Aliens in 2017. Back then, a rogue comet named Oumuamua (or scout) was detected passing close to Earth. Nothing strange so far, but on the 27th of June 2018, astronomers no- ticed a movement that did not match their calculations. At first, they thought that gasses evaporated from the object when it moved closer to the sun, but scientists later disproved this theory. There have been various theo- ries over the years, but none of them seems to be holding water. In 2018, the chairman of Harvard's Astronomy Department published a paper claiming that after careful mathematical analysis; Oumuamua could be a light sail of artificial ori- gins. Such sails use sunlight exerted on large mirrors to push the object through space. Humans already used a light sail in 2010 when they sent the IKAROS spacecraft to Venus. Whether Oumuamua is an Alien spacecraft or not is still debatable, and more data is required before we can have any certainty. Until then, let's keep on exploring our solar system, one planet at a time. What's for sure is that to achieve more ambitious space missions, we need AI to navigate our spacecraft through space. Autonomous vehi- cles will then analyse alien worlds and transmit the information back to Earth. Using technology as our ex- tended arm, we can manage to ven- ture where no man has gone before and beyond. Planet of the Robots - How Artificial Intelligence is taking over a nearby planet

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