"Caves are really important for NASA because they might be the key to find an answer for humanity’s longstanding question of if there is or was life in other planets. In today’s demonstration, our main success metric is if a team of robots can autonomously explore hundreds of meters into a Martian analogue cave. When integrating autonomy and AI on a physical robot, it’s really important that the robot supports the requirements of stability over difficult terrain. At the same time, it’s really important that the robot is capable of carrying enough science instruments while it has necessary endurance and speed. Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot is one of the few that satisfies these requirements simultaneously."