Barnes, David Preston

Cook, A.

Grande, Manuel

Tyler, Laurence

English

A proposal entitled Europlanet Research Infrastructure (RI) has been submitted to the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). This aims to “consolidate the integration of the planetary science community (which started with Europlanet’s FP6 Coordination Action), and to integrate a major distributed European infrastructure to be shared, fed and expanded by all planetary scientists”. “The research infrastructure needed to address the major planetary science questions extends beyond the space missions per se. It requires a diversity of tools that need to be used with maximum synergy, with numerical modelling and results from laboratory activities being essential to properly interpret observations and propose new theoretical models”1. To address this need, TransNational Access activities have been proposed that will for the first time open to a broad community of users a unique and comprehensive set of laboratory facilities and field sites tailored to the needs of planetary research. One such TransNational Access (TNA) facility is the Aberystwyth University Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab). This paper presents an overview of the PATLab, and describes the analogue terrain, available robotic, instrumentation, and performance evaluation measurement apparatus, software-based simulation facilities, and PATLab access by the planetary research communit

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Aberystwyth UniversityThe Europlanet RI TransNational Access Planetary Analogue TerrainLaboratory (PATLab)Grande, Manuel; Barnes, David Preston; Cook, A.; Tyler, LaurencePublished in:European Planetary Science Congress EPSC 2008Publication date:2008Citation for published version (APA):Grande, M., Barnes, D. P., Cook, A., & Tyler, L. (2008). The Europlanet RI TransNational Access PlanetaryAnalogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab). In European Planetary Science Congress EPSC 2008 (pp. 2008-)http://hdl.handle.net/2160/1850General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) areretained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by thelegal requirements associated with these rights.            • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study orresearch.            • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research PortalTake down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.tel: +44 1970 62 2400email: is@aber.ac.ukDownload date: 09. Jul. 2020EPSC Abstract,Vol. 3, EPSC2008-A-xxxx, 2008European Planetary Science Congress, c©Author(s) 2008The Europlanet RI TransNational Access Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab)D. Barnes (1), M. Grande (2), L. Tyler (2) and A. Cook (2)(1) Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DB, UK, (2) Institute ofMathematics and Physics, Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Aberystwyth, SY23 3BZ, UK (dpb@aber.ac.uk / Fax: +44-1970-622455)ABSTRACTA proposal entitled Europlanet Research Infrastructure (RI)has been submitted to the EU Seventh Framework Programme(FP7). This aims to “consolidate the integration of the plan-etary science community (which started with Europlanet’sFP6 Coordination Action), and to integrate a major dis-tributed European infrastructure to be shared, fed and ex-panded by all planetary scientists”. “The research infras-tructure needed to address the major planetary science ques-tions extends beyond the space missions per se. It requiresa diversity of tools that need to be used with maximum syn-ergy, with numerical modelling and results from labora-tory activities being essential to properly interpret obser-vations and propose new theoretical models”1. To addressthis need, TransNational Access activities have been pro-posed that will for the first time open to a broad commu-nity of users a unique and comprehensive set of labora-tory facilities and field sites tailored to the needs of plane-tary research. One such TransNational Access (TNA) facil-ity is the Aberystwyth University Planetary Analogue Ter-rain Laboratory (PATLab). This paper presents an overviewof the PATLab, and describes the analogue terrain, avail-able robotic, instrumentation, and performance evaluationmeasurement apparatus, software-based simulation facili-ties, and PATLab access by the planetary research commu-nity.BackgroundA new Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab)has been created at Aberystwyth University (AU) 2. The aimof the PATLab is to allow comprehensive mission operationsemulation experiments to be performed. These trials and ex-periments are essential when learning how deploy and usea robot science instrument for a given mission, and hencemaximise quality scientific data return. Work has resultedin a unique facility that has a terrain region composed ofMars Soil Simulant-D. It includes science target rocks thathave been fully characterised, and hence we can comparethese results with those generated using the PATLab plan-etary robotics facilities. The terrain has an area for sub-1Proposal coordinator Prof. Michel Blanc, CESR/CNRS.2Funded in part using an award from the UK Higher Education FundingCouncil for Wales (HEFCW).Figure 1: The AU half-scale ExoMars based rover chassis with 3DoF arm and PanCam instrument.surface sampling.The total floor area of the PATLab is 100 m2, and halfof this has been given over to the terrain region.PATLab EquipmentThe PATLab terrain has been designed to support a newrover chassis which is based upon the ESA ExoMars roverConcept-E mechanics [1], (see figures 1 and 2). The roverhas 6 wheel drives, 6 wheels steering, and a 6 wheel walk-ing capability. It is the first rover of its kind to support suchfunctionality. We have mounted an AU designed and built3 DoF robot arm onto the chassis. The PATLab is heavilyinstrumented and all data and control facilities are availablevia high speed links to remote users. Deployment trials havebeen conducted using the PATLab, for example, using QMversions of the Beagle 2 Rock Corer Grinder, and the Bea-gle 2 Mole: PLUTO.1EPSC Abstracts, Vol. 3, EPSC2008-A-00550, 2008 European Planetary Science Congress, © Author(s) 2008 Figure 2: The AU rover undergoing autonomous arm placementtrials. Sedimentary science target rocks are being used here.Based upon COTS cameras we have created a panoramiccamera instrument which emulates the proposed ExoMarsPanCam [2]. Image capture and machine vision processingalgorithms have been implemented and these run on-boarda rover chassis small-PC. A pan and tilt mechanism for ourPanCam instrument has been designed and built which isattached to a mast structure on our rover chassis. DuringPATLab. experiments the motion of the rover chassis wheelmechanics, rover attitude, robot arm deployment, and Pan-Cam pan and tilt mechanism can be measured using our Vi-con motion capture system. This comprises twelve infra-red cameras, and the Cartesian position of reflective mark-ers placed anywhere with the PATLab terrain region can betracked in real-time (typically 100 Hz) with a resolution lessthan 0.1 mm. The PATLab has a large selection of soft-ware tools for rover, robot arm and instrument modellingand simulation, for the processing and visualisation of cap-tured instrument data, and for simulating planetary environ-mental conditions (see figures 3 and 4).PATLab AccessIn addition to planetary scientists using our facility in per-son3, we have established a PATLab Access Grid Node.Given the size and multi-national composition of many plan-etary science teams, we believe that Access Grid technology3At a recent ExoMars PanCam PATLab workshop we had 17 externalattendees from MSSL (UK), MCSE (CH), Joanneum Research (A), DLR(D), ESTEC (NL), UofL (UK), EADS Astrium (UK), TUB (D), BIL (UK).Figure 3: Screen shot from the AU planetary environment simu-lation software suite (Mamer Vallis crater).Figure 4: Screen shot from the AU shadow simulation softwaresuite.will provide an ideal solution to the PI/Co-I travel and on-site availability problems inherent to (extended) mission op-erations. Not only can this technology be used by researchpartners at other European sites when evaluating their in-struments using the Europlanet TNA PATLab facility, butconnectivity to the UK Access Grid Support Centre (AGSC)could provide a number of new exciting science opportuni-ties via the UK e-science Centres of Excellence, the UKNational & Regional e-science Centres and EUROAG, theEuropean Access Grid.References[1] Barnes, D. et al. (2006), IJAsB, 5, 03, 221-241.[2] Griffiths, A. et al. (2006), IJAsB, 5, 03, 269-275.2

The Europlanet RI TransNational Access Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab)

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The Europlanet RI TransNational Access Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab)

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