High-speed lunar navigation for crewed and remotely-piloted vehicles

Figure 2 - NASA’s K10 autonomous or teleoperated rover designed for robotic site survey, at speeds up to 0.6 m/s. (Houghton Crater K10 Field Test, 2010) [NASA/ARC/NLSI].

Pedersen & Allan, et al.
NASA Ames Research Center
Carnegie Mellon University
Humboldt University
ETH, Zurich

Increased navigation speed is desirable for lunar rovers, whether autonomous, crewed or remotely operated, but is hampered by the low gravity, high contrast lighting and rough terrain. We describe lidar based navigation system deployed on NASA’s K10 autonomous rover and to increase the terrain hazard situational awareness of the Lunar Electric Rover crew.

Introduction - High speed mobility (by planetary rover standards) is desirable for more efficient exploration of the lunar surface, particularly if human crews are present there.

NASA’s Lunar Electric Rover (LER) can drive at 10km/h (3m/s) on rough terrain, faster on known smooth surfaces. By comparison, the MER vehicles moves at a few cm/s while stopping regularly.

Driving on the Moon is complicated by the low gravity, rough terrain, high contrast lighting and alien environment.

Under the 1/6g lunar gravity a vehicle becomes airborne at relatively modest speeds (driving the Apollo era lunar rover at 7 mph was reportedly like being aboard a rowing boat for this reason). The reduced gravity also lessens vehicle-ground friction. Together these effects increase maneuvering distances.

Astronauts complained of difficulty discerning surface features on the Moon under certain lighting conditions, such as with the sun behind them. The lack of terrestrial depth cues compounds the difficulties of driving.

The 3 sec signal round trip time delay to the Moon permits tele-operating a vehicle from Earth (e.g. Lunakhod) with diffculty (increasing with speed).

This paper describes our robotic rover navigation systems, currently running on NASA’s autonomous or teleoperated K10 rover (Figure 2) and as a crew aid on the LER for increasing pilot situational awareness of the surrounding terrain. We address terrain sensing for 4 different classes of rovers: K10, the Lunar All Terrain Utility Vehicle (LATUV, Figure 3), the LER and the LER operating under lunar gravity and time-delayed tele-operation.

Subsequent sections describe the terrain mapping and hazard detection software, pose estimation, the rover software infrastructure for command and data handling, the graphical user interface and performance figures.

Read the Full Abstract, HERE

Figure 8 - Apollo 17 Station 3 high-resolution pan centered on the south rim of Ballet Crater; frames AS17-138-21155 through 21167 assembled by David Harland for the Apollo Surface Journal [NASA/JSC].

i-SAIRAS 2010. 10th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space - Sapporo, Japan, August 29 - September 1, 2010

Piloting a lunar rover

At NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, CA two K10 rovers navigate a lunar-like landscape. The K10 program is designed to help NASA do more advanced surveys and surveillance of the moon, and for the time being, the robots are being deployed in a series of similar environments across the planet. [Daniel Terdiman/CNET]

Daniel Terdiman
CNET news

MOUNTAIN VIEW (NASA ARC) - For a few minutes Thursday, as I steered one of NASA's K10 intelligent robots across a small field of rocky, sandy terrain, I could almost imagine myself piloting the rover across the surface of Mars or the moon.

Until, that is, I realized I had pretty much no idea what I was doing, and saw that my struggles to steer the rover forward were actually sending it backward. Given that this little robot is worth at least as much as a mid-range Mercedes, I was relieved to see the eagle-eyed scientist standing a few feet away from it as it approached a group of large rocks that could send it sprawling, a switch in his hand capable of stopping it dead in its tracks.

I was spending the afternoon at NASA's Ames Research Center here, talking with Terry Fong, the director of the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG), about the K10 rover program--an initiative designed for remote scouting operations on the moon or Mars. To be sure, the program has been around for a few years, but Fong and his team are constantly tweaking the robots, and so what I got my hands on Thursday (remotely, at least) was a great deal more sophisticated than would have been the case just a few years ago.

Read the Story and view the Video HERE.