Volume 10, Number 5 • September/October 2002 • Advanced Technologies

Beyond Remote Control

The Computing, Information and Communications Technology (CICT) program is one with many highly technical areas, including high-level autonomy. High-level autonomy is where a system is programmed to perform without interaction. Researchers at NASA Ames in Moffett Field, CA developed a conceptual, high-level autonomy architecture for rovers to conduct research on Mars, in collaboration primarily with NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

A recent rover test at Ames was the first step in showing the integrated functionality of a number of autonomous software components being developed within the Automated Reasoning project. The components involved in the test included the visual interface (VIZ) for displaying a model of the rover and its environment; a rover executive that can execute contingent, concurrent plans; a ground-based planner; high-quality stereo imaging; target assessment algorithms for segmenting the rock from the ground and identifying flat patches on the rock; motion planning algorithms for arm placement; and hand-eye calibration, i.e., coding to allow the rover camera frames and arm coordinate frames to calibrate at the same time.

Although only a minimal functionality of each of these components was tested, and although the environment in which the system was tested was completely benign, the lab test fulfilled the objective of demonstrating single-cycle rover ground commanding for target instrument placement.

Bob Morris, NASA’s project manager for Intelligent Systems within CICT explains, “The goal is to develop a suite of software systems that will collectively allow for more automatic surface exploration by rovers on Mars. This lab test was the first stage in solving the difficult problem of integrating these software systems so that they work together to give a rover the ability to automatically navigate to a target of interest and place a science instrument on the target to collect data without control from elsewhere.” Q

For more information, contact David Lackner at the NASA Ames Research Center Commercial Technology Office, Mail Stop 202A-3, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000, phone: 650/604-5761, fax: 650/604-1592, dlackner@mail.arc.nasa.gov, Web site: http://technology.arc.nasa.gov. Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

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