"If androids dream of electric sheep, what do Mars rovers dream about? Their fiery descents through the Red Planet's atmosphere? Or maybe their Earthly home, so many million miles away? The seemingly silly question is worthy of a few minutes' consideration, for researchers revealed Tuesday (Aug. 14) that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on the Red Planet has a "dream mode." This state allows the 1-ton robot to save energy while performing vital functions, scientists said. "It's sort of the reptile brain for the rover," Curiosity chief avionics engineer Jim Donaldson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters Tuesday. "So what it allows us is maintaining a look at the health of the vehicle while the compute element is turned off," Donaldson added. "And it allows turning on heaters, on actuators and so on, in preparation for the next science activity."" - John (bird whisperer) from Bookmarklet

"Curiosity's prime mission is slated to last about two years, but its plutonium power source could keep the rover roaming for considerably longer than that if no key parts break down, researchers have said. Still, the Curiosity rover team is keen to conserve energy whenever and wherever they can. And that's where "dream mode" comes in. "A lot of times we do stuff with the rover computer off, because it saves energy for us," said rover mission systems manager Mike Watkins of JPL. "By using our reptile brain here in dream mode, it allows us to do just enough activities to stay alive and monitor what's going on when we're asleep."" - John (bird whisperer)

I studied artificial intelligence for a while at university and remember seeing a system designed to recognise simple shapes - a house, a cat, a boat, etc. - and display them on a screen. When it had the inputs turned off the screen would randomly flash according to weighted triggers shooting through its connectors and occasionally you would see the house, boat, cat, etc. appear. It was believed this was analagous to human dreaming. - Mark H

That's interesting. I guess they "dream" about whatever they're programmed to recognize. - John (bird whisperer)