Overview
- The prototype, which completed a seven‑day desert campaign in March 2026, drove about 16 miles (26 kilometers) over 37 hours with minimal human intervention.
- ERNEST uses an active suspension, two powered front joints and four steerable wheels to lift individual wheels, change posture, and execute new gaits such as squirming and wheel‑walking.
- JPL trained the rover’s decision making with reinforcement learning in a high‑fidelity simulator by running thousands of virtual driving hours to match hardware responses across terrain types.
- The rover reached top speeds near 0.6 mph (1 km/h), roughly ten times faster than current Mars rovers, supporting concepts for longer “science road trips” and faster surface traversal.
- Work on ERNEST began in 2022 as internal JPL R&D and is now funded by NASA program offices as engineers integrate active‑suspension control with longer‑range navigation and study scaling for lunar or Mars missions.