SEEKER-AUTONOMOUS LONG RANGE ROVER NAVIGATION FOR REMOTE EXPLORATION

Mark Woods (1) , Andrew Shaw (1) , Estelle Tidey (2) , Bach Van Pham (3) , Unal Artan (4) , Brian Maddison (5) , Gary Cross (6)

1 SCISYS
2 Roke Manor Research
3 LAAS - Laboratoire d'analyse et d'architecture des systèmes
4 MDA Space and Robotics Limited
5 RAL - STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
6 BAE Systems

Under the umbrella of the innovative, ESA StarTiger program, a rapid prototyping study called Seeker was initiated which brought together a diverse range of partners from space/non-space to develop a prototype Mars rover system capable of autonomously exploring 6km of highly representative Mars terrain over a 3 day period. This paper reports on our approach and the final, successful field trials which took place in the Atacama Desert. Long range navigation and the associated remote, rover field trials are a new departure for ESA and this study therefore represents a novel initiative in this area. The study's primary focus was to determine if current computer vision and artificial intelligence based software could enable such a capability on Mars given the current limit of around 200m per sol. This work is part of a wider effort to achieve a step change in autonomous capability for future Mars/Lunar exploration rover platforms.

Domaines: Robotique [cs.RO]

Mark Woods, Andrew Shaw, Estelle Tidey, Bach Van Pham, Unal Artan, et al.. SEEKER-AUTONOMOUS LONG RANGE ROVER NAVIGATION FOR REMOTE EXPLORATION. International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, Sep 2012, Turin, Italy. pp.N/A. ⟨hal-01002514⟩