2019 Year 12 IB Extended Essays

28 modes – one that is completely autonomous, and one that is partially autonomous and partially programmed by Hanson technicians (Hanson Robotics, 2019). Appendix 6: The Mars Opportunity Rover was a development of NASA’s that was launched in 2003, and landed on Mars in 2004, to search for signs that Mars has been, or could be an environment capable of sustaining life (NASA, 2019). Included in the Rover, there was a panoramic camera, miniature thermal emission spectrometer, rock abrasion tool, hazard avoidance cameras, and navigation cameras (NASA, 2019). The Opportunity Rover, whilst controlled by the engineers at NASA, had the ability to collect data from Mars’s atmosphere, process it, and send it back to the laboratory on Earth. It also had the ability to move around Mars’s surface, navigating its way around obstacles, and keeping itself upright. Appendix 7: Each citizen of China is awarded a starting score of 1000. Nadra Nittle, a reporter for Vox – an American news site, explained the rankings of these social credits: ‘960 to 1,000 is an A; 850 to 955 points is a B; 840 to 600 is a C; and any score below that is a D, which designates the score-holder as “untrustworthy.”’ (Nittle, 2018) Once a citizen accrues a certain amount of demerits, their freedom to travel – both internationally and out of their town on public transport – are limited or completely removed altogether. They can also be prohibited from sending their children to certain schools, getting certain jobs, and staying in certain hotels, and are placed on the government’s ‘blacklist’, as a ‘bad citizen’ (Xiuzhong Xu and Xiao, 2018). There are even certain lists on dating websites as to who is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ citizen. In some areas of China, the government has employed the technology of the ‘Integrated Joint Operations Platform’, which is a highly specific mass