Other forms: rovers
A rover is a wheeled robot driven across the surface of another world. A Mars rover, the rover landed, drive the rover.
Rovers have explored the Moon and Mars, and the Mars ones are driven with a delay of several minutes each way, so they must be able to avoid obstacles themselves. Some have outlasted their design lives by more than a decade. The older sense of rover is a wanderer, from roam, and it is where the Land Rover and the dog name come from. Note rover as a title in Scouting.
1nounroverA wheeled robot driven across another world's surface.
“The rover was designed for ninety days and ran about fourteen years.”
2nounwandersSomebody who wanders.
“He was a rover for about a decade and then bought a house.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
rover is a wanderer or exploring machine.
Middle English roven meant to wander, from a Norse verb. A rover was a wanderer and, for a while, a pirate — so the machines on Mars are named after sea raiders by a very long route.
Proto-Indo-European
*webʰ- — to braid, weave
Proto-Germanic
*wabōną
Old Norse
ráfa — to roam, wander
Middle English
*roven
English, today
rover
Built from
From rove + -er. Rove is derived from Late Middle English roven, rove (“to wander”); further etymology uncertain, possibly an English Midlands variant of Northern England raven, rave (“to rove, stray, wander”), possibly from Old Norse ráfa (“to roam, wander”) (although rove and rave are only attested much later), possibly from Proto-Germanic wabōną, wabjaną (“to cause to weave; to entangle, wrap”), from Proto-Indo-European webʰ- (“to braid, weave”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA