In the famous story of Hansel and Gretel, they dropped bread

crumbs along the road of a treacherous forest so that they will

not get lost. Rovers Engineering may also one day use the same
tactic to navigate through planetary terrains.
When a rover loses its signal permanently, the data it
gathered will also be permanently lost as well. That is why
Wolfgang Fink (2023) and his colleagues, developed miniature
rovers, piggy backing on top of a mother rover. The miniature
rovers will now act as a puppet for the mother rover, where it
can be sent to caverns, caves and any treacherous landforms.
The breadcrumb trick
will now come into action
once the rover senses that
the signal it has to the
mother rover is weakening.
This will initiate the rover
to drop a small signal node
in the ground so that it can
still be properly connected
to the mother rover. The
rover will drop another one,
once it feels the signal was
too weak again.
“One of the new aspects is what we call opportunistic
deployment-the idea that you deploy ‘breadcrumbs’ when you have
to and not according to a previously planned schedule” said Fink.
And because of this new way of sending in rovers, this will
enable the rovers to enter treacherous and hostile environments
without the fear of disconnecting from earth, Because the
miniature rovers are built to be expendable once their job was
done.
"They're designed to be expendable," Fink said. "Instead of
wasting resources to get them into the cave and back out, it
makes more sense to have them go as far as they possibly can and
leave them behind once they have fulfilled their mission, run out
of power or succumbed to a hostile environment."
Moreover, these rovers can also be used here on earth,
especially when disaster strikes. The rovers can be sent into the
rubbles searching for trapped victims faster and safer.
References:
Wolfgang Finke et. al., (2023). A Hansel & Gretel Breadcrumb-
Style Dynamically Deployed Communication Network Paradigm using
Mesh Topology for Planetary Subsurface Exploration
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/
S0273117723001187?via%3Dihub

Daniel Stolte, (2023) Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trick

inspires robotic exploration system for caves on Mars and beyond
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-hansel-gretel-breadcrumb-robotic-
exploration.html

Allison Gaspirini, (2023) A trick inspired by Hansel and Gretel

could help rovers explore other worlds
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/rover-bread-crumbs-hansel-
gretel-technology