The Parallel Challenges of Earth and Mars

Before humans ever set foot on Mars, robots have and will continue to pave the way— surveying, unpacking cargo, setting up infrastructure, and preparing the site for human arrival. It is the same kind of independent action that powers Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) used in factories today. Even if you wanted to directly control a Mars robot, an average 450000ms lag is untenable (gamers will know even 200ms can cause control issues).

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Critical Autonomous Capabilities

Think about it: AMRs in modern factories must navigate dynamic spaces, adjust to obstacles, and complete complex logistical tasks without constant oversight. On Mars, robotic systems will face a similar challenge—landing in unpredictable terrain, transporting supplies to designated locations, and even assembling key infrastructure with no immediate human control due to the communication delay. If tasks aren’t able to be completed in this way on Mars, manned missions may never happen; similarly, when the AMR’s fail in factories, companies will lose thousands of dollars (if not more) for every second of delay.

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Adaptability in Unpredictable Environments

In both cases, resilience and adaptability are critical. Just as an AMR in a factory must re-route when encountering a blocked aisle, a Mars rover or autonomous lander must dynamically adjust its path when faced with unexpected hazards. On Mars this could be a wind storm shifting sand or interfering with projects in progress. In a factory this could be a line change, a new intersection, or anything else that can cause downtimes or reintegration costs.

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FleetGlue's Solution

Minimizing the necessary human input to solve these issues is paramount to mitigating these costs (both time and capital) to the missions. That is why our team at FleetGlue is working hard to create software that increases performance and decreases downtime by providing a robust software framework that provides quick and easy no code solutions to these kinds of problems.

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The Interplanetary Connection

The lessons we learn from self-sustaining industrial automation are shaping the future of interplanetary exploration—and vice versa. The next generation of AMRs might not just be optimizing supply chains on Earth… they could be laying the groundwork for humanity’s expansion into space.

It’s at least 33.9 million miles to Mars but the distance between modern AMRs and the robots which will guide a successful Mars mission is closer than you think.