Field testing of utility robots for lunar surface operations

Abstract

Background One of the central challenges for lunar exploration is to develop and validate the systems needed for lunar surface operations. In particular, outpost missions will require numerous tasks to be performed on the lunar surface that cannot be achieved through human EVA alone. For example, comprehensive site surveys (for site planning, resource prospecting, geological characterization, etc.) require hundreds of measurements and hundreds of hours of survey time. In comparison, the total duration of lunar surface EVA of Apollo 11 through 17 was approximately 80 hours. For the past three years, the NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group has been developing teleoperated and supervised "utility" robots to perform routine, tedious, highly repetitive, and long duration tasks that would be unproductive for crew to perform manually. Our approach is to automate low-risk, site operations that do not normally require robots to operate in close, physical proximity to EVA crew and that do not require human-paced interaction or continuous control. Visual Inspection In 2006, we used the NASA Ames K10 planetary rover to perform a remote "walk-around" visual inspection of the NASA Johnson SCOUT crew rover Mapping Survey In July 2007, we used two K10 rovers to map several simulated lunar sites during a field test at Haughton Crater, Canada Rover operations were designed to simulate a near-term lunar mission, including use of orbital data, interactive robot user interfaces, and remote operations procedures for intra-vehicular activity (IVA) and ground-control. The Haughton-Mars Project base camp served as a proxy for a lunar outpost. During three weeks of operations, the two K10's drove a total distance of 45 km (almost entirely autonomously) and returned more than 25 GB of survey dat