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Glite Dictionary
🤖 A robot vehicle 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Adult Scout 🚶 A wanderer
rover

rover

105 6.8
A robot that moves on a planet's surface to study it
  • noun
  • /ˈroʊvər/
  • Specialized
translation icon : rover
  • Data from several rover cameras helps bring the robot arms within reach of their targets.
  • Mars rover
  • robotic rover
  • data from the rover

If those problems weren't so interesting, I'd probably still be sending Rovers to glaciers, right?

Examples

  • NASA's rover Curiosity is designed to explore the surface of Mars and send back valuable scientific data.

  • The task of sampling ice on the Moon falls to a robotic rover named Cocytus.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Think of it as the Mars Rover for Earth.

  • And if so, what's another major issue that the Rover will have to overcome?

  • NASA scientists are excited over recent findings by the Mars Rover of fossilized organic compounds on the surface that indicate at some time in the past there may have been life on the Red Planet.

    Mars Needs Moms (2011)

  • The automatic rover on Mars collects samples and analyzes the soil for signs of past life.

  • During its mission, the rover navigated rocky terrain and transmitted images of the Martian landscape back to Earth.

Synonyms

vehicle
vsrover
∞ 1.6

A machine like a car or bus that carries people and goods

is built to move independently to explore and study surfaces
robot
vsrover
454 2.6

A machine that people can program to do jobs automatically

is specialised as a moving science instrument for planetary surfaces
spacecraft
vsrover
  • Specialized
165 4.2

A vehicle that travels in outer space

is used specifically to move and study surfaces of planets

Compounds

sea rover
  • Archaic
9.9

A person who robs ships and coastal places at sea without government permission

sea rover
8.9

A boat that people use to explore remote or unknown sea areas

How Specialized

lander
  • Specialized
41 7.9
rover
  • Specialized
105 6.8
sond
  • Specialized
9.9
probe
  • Specialized
225 4.9

Surface Forms

rover singular
rovers plural

Morphology

rover = rove (transparent) = rove + er

Agentive formation 'rove' + '-er' applied to a device that 'roves' over a surface; the relation is straightforward.

Etymology

Rover for a robot vehicle also comes from the root rove 'to wander', because the machine 'wanders' over a planet to look and study. So a rover is a robot that moves across a landscape to explore and collect information.