Analysis and simulation of robot-terrain interaction sound for estimation of terrain properties and detection of anomalies

Maybe space is not so silent after all—the inclusion of microphones on NASA's Perseverance Mars rover opens the door to exploring space through sound. Sound is an encoder of the physical interactions that take place between contacting bodies, which provides information that vision cannot. When exploring planetary surfaces, knowing the properties of the terrain is important for selecting an appropriate mobility strategy. The long-term goal of this work is to establish a predictive model of robot sound and to use this predictive model both for inference (e.g. estimating terrain characteristics or detecting robotic and environmental anomalies) and for simulation (e.g. adding sound to commonly-used physics simulators like MuJoCo, Drake, and Gazebo). Being able to estimate the character of the terrain a rover is driving on can support surface navigation and mobility initiatives.

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