Dave Lavery on Sending Robots to Space

Dave Lavery, an advocate for robotic education, discusses remote explorations by robotic systems for planets such as Mars. Space exploration machines can be innovative and intelligent but also strikingly stupid, he says. Dave describes how they work and NASA’s rocky road to developing a viable robot to explore Mars. In short, an summer intern ended up inventing it for them. Dave complements his talk with interesting photographs, showing us the first human “footprint” on Mars.