360 deg Camera Head for Unmanned Sea Surface Vehicles

The 360 camera head consists of a set of six color cameras arranged in a circular pattern such that their overlapping fields of view give a full 360 view of the immediate surroundings. The cameras are enclosed in a watertight container along with support electronics and a power distribution system. Each camera views the world through a watertight porthole. To prevent overheating or condensation in extreme weather conditions, the watertight container is also equipped with an electrical cooling unit and a pair of internal fans for circulation

Results from the Mars Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm experiment

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95618/1/jgre2693.pd

SEIS: Insight’s Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure of Mars

By the end of 2018, 42 years after the landing of the two Viking seismometers on Mars, InSight will deploy onto Mars’ surface the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure) instrument; a six-axes seismometer equipped with both a long-period three-axes Very Broad Band (VBB) instrument and a three-axes short-period (SP) instrument. These six sensors will cover a broad range of the seismic bandwidth, from 0.01 Hz to 50 Hz, with possible extension to longer periods. Data will be transmitted in the form of three continuous VBB components at 2 sample per second (sps), an estimation of the short period energy content from the SP at 1 sps and a continuous compound VBB/SP vertical axis at 10 sps. The continuous streams will be augmented by requested event data with sample rates from 20 to 100 sps. SEIS will improve upon the existing resolution of Viking’s Mars seismic monitoring by a factor of ∼ 2500 at 1 Hz and ∼ 200 000 at 0.1 Hz. An additional major improvement is that, contrary to Viking, the seismometers will be deployed via a robotic arm directly onto Mars’ surface and will be protected against temperature and wind by highly efficient thermal and wind shielding. Based on existing knowledge of Mars, it is reasonable to infer a moment magnitude detection threshold of Mw ∼ 3 at 40◦ epicentral distance and a potential to detect several tens of quakes and about five impacts per year. In this paper, we first describe the science goals of the experiment and the rationale used to define its requirements. We then provide a detailed description of the hardware, from the sensors to the deployment system and associated performance, including transfer functions of the seismic sensors and temperature sensors. We conclude by describing the experiment ground segment, including data processing services, outreach and education networks and provide a description of the format to be used for future data distribution

Control of cocoa swollen shoot disease by eradicating infected trees in Ghana: A survey of treated and replanted areas

Cocoa farms that had been treated and replanted in Ghana during the most recent phase of the cocoa swollen shoot virus (CSSV) eradication campaign were surveyed. Farms that were replanted close to adjoining old cocoa farms or which contained old trees were common in most (38) of the 41 cocoa farms surveyed. CSSV infections were apparent in 20 (53%) out of these 38 farms and they pose a serious risk of causing early infections of the re-planted farms. Control strategies that isolate the newly planted farms by a boundary of immune crops as barriers to reduce CSSV re-infection are discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

CAMPOUT: A control architecture for multi-robot planetary outposts

A manned Mars habitat will require a significant amount of infrastructure that can be deployed using robotic precursor missions. This infrastructure deployment will probably include the use of multiple, heterogeneous, mobile robotic platforms. Delays due to the long communication path to Mars limit the amount of teleoperation that is possible. A control architecture called CAMPOUT (Control Architecture for Multirobot Planetary Outposts) is currently under development at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA. It is a three layer behavior-based system that incorporates the low level control routines currently used on the JPL SRR/FIDO/LEMUR rovers. The middle behavior layer uses either the BISMARC (Biologically Inspired System for Mapbased Autonomous Rover Control) or MOBC (Multi-Objective Behavior Control) action selection mechanisms. CAMPOUT includes the necessary group behaviors and communication mechanisms for coordinated/cooperative control of heterogeneous robotic platforms. We report the results of some ongoing work at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA on the transport phase of a photovoltaic (PV) tent deployment mission

FIDO: a Field Integrated Design & Operations Rover for Mars Surface Exploration

We overview our recent development and testing of the FIDO rover, an advanced technology prototype for long range mobile planetary science. The current rover is capable of semi-autonomously navigating to, and gathering multi-modal science data from widely dispersed rock-soil targets of interest. Commands are input to FIDO through a high-level "web" interface enabling geographically distributed and collaborative science planning, sequencing and data analysis. The rover carries a diverse instrument suite: a mastmounted panoramic science camera, navigational camera, and bore-sighted infrared point spectrometer, also, a front-mounted robot arm with multiple affixed smaller instruments, one being a color micro-imager. FIDO further integrates instrumentation and controls for rock coring. The rover, in form and function, is a model for the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers 2003 mission. We have conducted several recent FIDO trials with mission scientists and flight operations personnel so as to characterize the underlying robotic technologies and science approach. We overview this work, noting highlights of both the rover design and science testing. We comment briefly on related work that extends operations to Mars sample return