Engineering topics

Bualat, Maria

Publications and source records attributed to Bualat, Maria.

25 records · Page 2

NASA NTRS2006

Human-Robot Site Survey and Sampling for Space Exploration

NASA is planning to send humans and robots back to the Moon before 2020. In order for extended missions to be productive, high quality maps of lunar terrain and resources are required. Although orbital images can provide much information, many features (local topography, resources, etc) will have to be characterized directly on the surface. To address this need, we are developing a system to perform site survey and sampling. The system includes multiple robots and humans operating in a variety of team configurations, coordinated via peer-to-peer human-robot interaction. In this paper, we present our system design and describe planned field tests.

Fong, Terrence↗

NASA NTRS2006

The K9 On-Board Rover Architecture

This paper describes the software architecture of NASA Ames Research Center s K9 rover. The goal of the onboard software architecture team was to develop a modular, flexible framework that would allow both high- and low-level control of the K9 hardware. Examples of low-level control are the simple drive or pan/tilt commands which are handled by the resource managers, and examples of high-level control are the command sequences which are handled by the conditional executive. In between these two control levels are complex behavioral commands which are handled by the pilot, such as drive to goal with obstacle avoidance or visually servo to a target. This paper presents the design of the architecture as of Fall 2000. We describe the state of the architecture implementation as well as its current evolution. An early version of the architecture was used for K9 operations during a dual-rover field experiment conducted by NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from May 14 to May 16, 2000.

Bresina, John L.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Multi-Target Single Cycle Instrument Placement

This presentation is about the robotic exploration of Mars using multiple targets command cycle, safe instrument placements, safe operation, and K9 Rover which has a 6 wheel steer rocket-bogey chassis (FIDO, MER), 70% MER size, 1.2 GHz Pentium M laptop running Linux OS, Odometry and compass/inclinometer, CLARAty architecture, 5 DOF manipulator w/CHAMP microscopic camera, SciCams, NavCams and HazCams.

Pedersen, Liam↗

NASA NTRS2004

Visual target tracking for rover-based planetary exploration

To command a rover to go to a location of scientific interest on a remote planet, the rover must be capable of reliably tracking the target designated by the scientist from ten or more meters away. The rover must maintain lock on the target while traversing rough terrain and avoiding obstacles without the need for communication with Earth.

Bualat, Maria↗

NASA NTRS2002

Instrument Deployment for Mars Rovers

Future Mars rovers, such as the planned 2009 MSL rover, require sufficient autonomy to robustly approach rock targets and place an instrument in contact with them. It took the 1997 Sojourner Mars rover between 3 and 5 communications cycles to accomplish this. This paper describes the technologies being developed and integrated onto the NASA Ames K9 prototype Mars rover to both accomplish this in one cycle, and to extend the complexity and duration of operations that a Mars rover can accomplish without intervention from mission control.

Pedersen, Liam↗

NASA NTRS2001

Mars Rovers: Past, Present, and Future

This viewgraph presentation provides information on the exploration of Mars through the use of rover vehicles. Mars is considered an interesting planet because it is the most like Earth of all known planets, and it may have or have had water on or below its surface. There are many different engineering design challenges for roving vehicles intended for Mars. These include: communications time delay, narrow communications bandwidth, extreme temperatures, rough and rocky terrain, the lack of a global positioning system, and dust. The Sojourner Rover specifications are provided including wheel diameter and instruments. There are prototypes being tested at NASA's Ames Research Center of the next generation Mars rovers.

Bualat, Maria↗

NASA NTRS1997

Initial Results from Vision-based Control of the Marsokhod Rover

A geologist characterizing a field site typically wanders from one interesting geologic feature to another. Performing geology remotely with a mobile robot, we have observed the same behavior: geologists see a visually-interesting feature and wish to approach it for closer inspection. To date, navigating a mobile robot to a visually-interesting feature has been accomplished by driving to a location close to the feature. This introduces two problems: assigning a location to the feature and navigating the rover to that location. In practice, solutions to both of these problems are susceptable to positional error. Fundamentally, we can see where we want the robot to go, but it is difficult to precisely quantify where either the target or the robot are located. The development of vision-based control of robot manipulators suggests an alternative approach for mobile robot explorers. We have developed a vision-based control system that enables the Marsokhod rover to drive to within sampling distance of visually-designated rock or natural feature. We will describe this system and our initial results using it during a field experiment in the Painted Desert of Arizona.

Wettergreen, David↗