NASA's polar rover GROVER passes Greenland test NASA's new polar rover, GROVER, just finished a fully autonomous five-week test in Greenland. The GROVER polar rover underwent a test of its power consumption at Greenland's highest point, Summit Camp June, 2013. NASA Goddard/Matt Radcliff NASA's new 800-pound solar-powered polar rover, GROVER, recently went to Greenland to undergo tests and demonstrate autonomous operations. GROVER, as the robot is known, stands for Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, or the Greenland Rover. Designed by students at Goddard engineering boot camps in 2010 and 2011, GROVER was built to carry ground-penetrating radar to analyze layers of snow and ice. The rover was later transferred to Boise State University for fine-tuning with NASA funding. Researchers previously tested GROVER at a beach in Maryland and in the snow in Idaho before sending it on its first polar test at Summit Camp, the highest point in Greenland. Boise graduate student Gabriel Trisca accompanied the rover, where scientists proved the robot could execute commands sent from a distance over an Iridium satellite connection. "GROVER has grown to be a fully-autonomous, GPS-guided and satellite-linked platform for scientific research," Trisca said. Researchers initially expected the 800-pound rover to work around the clock, but polar conditions took a toll on GROVER's electronics, battery consumption and mobility. "It's always more challenging than you thought it was going to be," said Hans-Peter Marshall, science adviser on the project. Batteries don't recharge as fast and they don't last as long, and it takes computers and instrumentation longer to boot. The rover was able to transmit information in real time on its onboard system performance, and the robot's solar-charged batteries allowed it to operate for up to 12 hours before recharging. GROVER collected and stored radar data over 18 miles during the test. Radar data is currently stored onboard and retrieved afterward, but researchers want to switch to a geostationary satellite connection to transmit the data in real time. GROVER's Greenland test coincided with the field-testing of a smaller, faster, non-autonomous robot called CoolRobot, built by Dartmouth College. Marshall said that in the future, he would like the different polar rover teams work together to create a pool of robotic platforms which scientists could borrow for their studies. "One thing I can imagine is having a big robot like GROVER with several smaller ones that can move radially outwards to increase the swath GROVER would cover," Marshall said. Also, we've been thinking about bringing back smaller platforms to a larger one to recharge.