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Completed TRL 4 (started at 4, targeting 5)
The Advanced Navigation Software task is developing approaches for dealing with the significant challenges of autonomous planetary surface navigation, including descent on rough and steep terrain, exploring lava tubes, navigating long distances without communications, and localizing without infrastructure.
This work will extend and enhance past HRS work in autonomous mobility, Dark Navigation, and hazard detection/display for high-speed crew mobility. In FY13, HRS developed multiple strategies for terrain relative navigation and absolute localization relative to a priori map data, such as orbital DEM’s, by registering rover observations to orbital observations automatically. These systems were tested using canned data from prior field tests. The software is integrated into HRS robot software and RAPID middleware.
In FY14, the team will build on its past Advanced Navigation work, leveraging and extending the development and testing performed previously. The proof-of-concept algorithms developed during FY13 will be improved, streamlined, and integrated into our rover software stack to run onboard and in real time. The resulting system will be tested in a live onboard test of the system in a realistic setting.
Ability for robotic rovers to localize (determine location) and navigate without the need for localization infrastructure (such as GPS and beacons).
Advanced mobility has the potential to perform significant increases in the ability to determine location of a rover on a remote surface through combining visual odometry, horizon mapping, and digital elevation map matching. This work is already beginning to be used for science operations on Mars, giving the science team an update on the rover’s location ahead of the official update.
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