The intent of the project was to create an autonomous rover to survey the distribution of microbes on Antarctica's ice sheets.
The goal was to create a robotic platform with full navigational autonomy and clean, sustainable power systems.
This complete isolation would've allowed the robot to operate unattended and avoid any possible contamination of its results.
A working model of the LORAX rover called Nomad was tested in 2005[3] on the frozen Mascoma Lake in New Hampshire.
The rover, independent of any human guidance, traveled over fourteen kilometers in all on the frozen lake and returned to its starting point.