ICRA10 Planetary Rovers Workshop

 

2010 International Conference on Robotics and Automation

Anchorage, Alaska

Monday, May 3, 2010 (full day)

 

Abstract

 

With the ongoing success of the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), plans for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and ESA ExoMars, and return to the Moon, it is clear that future planetary surface exploration will employ mobile robots.  Also, the envelope of mobility is being extended to aerial mobility for Titan or Venus and subsurface access for sampling operations, initially from fixed landers such as Phoenix.

 

This full day workshop will present recent results from Mars surface operations, future surface and aerial mission designs, as well as related results from terrestrial field tests.  Topics to be addressed include autonomous navigation and mobility in natural environments, autonomous manipulation for instrument placement and sample acquisition, autonomous science data processing, system design and architecture, and operations interface design and use.  Core technologies include natural terrain sensing, novel mobility system designs, computation-restricted software performance, power-restricted system performance, and telemetry-restricted remote commanding.  While the current target of much research is Mars and Moon exploration, discussion of application to other planetary bodies is desirable.

 

Organizer:  

 

Richard Volpe

Mobility and Robotic Systems Section

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of Technology

Pasadena, CA  91109  USA

volpe@jpl.nasa.gov

https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/

 

 

 

Motivation and Objective:

 

While planetary robotics exploration is an extremely costly endeavor, there is a relatively small part of the mainstream robotics community involved in this arena.  Many reasons exist for this reality, but one of the issues is a lack of engagement with the community on the relevant issues driving the scientific objectives, or acting as obstacles to progress.  Such lack of appreciation can also exist within the space robotics community itself, where different mission constraints are unique and consume all attention away from similar problems and endeavors elsewhere.  For instance, solutions for Mars and Moon exploration seem very similar as robotics problems, but other realities including cost, communication distances, thermal and radiation environments, planetary motions, and target system usage, can all lead to drastically different solutions. 

 

Therefore, it is highly desirable to have an unhurried, detailed, technical exchange between space robotics system developers.  Such an exchange is intended not to look like simply another, invited session in a conference full of sessions.  Rather the intent is to allow for much longer and more detailed presentations, with time for insightful comments and questions from others building or operating similar systems, or wanting to learn more about this field.  It is for this reason a full day is requested.

 

Also, by having some presentations by speakers from previous versions of this workshop, there is a chance to review progress or new directions, both locally to an institution or country, as well as across the field.   To complement these mainstream participants, there is also a desire to have presentations on newer novel ideas, or related research that has not been represented in the past meetings.

 

 

Presentations:

 

Presenter

Org

Topic

abs

paper

talk

video

image

Richard Volpe

NASA JPL

Introduction to the Planetary Rovers Workshop

T

Jaret Matthews

NASA JPL

ATHLETE

T

16

I

Bill Bluethmann

NASA JSC

Lunar Electric Rover and Robonaut2

T

11

I

Rainer Krenn

DLR

MBS Simulations and Performance Testing of Planetary Rover Locomotion

A

T

I

Alana Sherman

MBARI

The Benthic Rover: The Other MARS Rover

A

T

2

I

Kazuya Yoshida

Tohoku Univ.

Traction Performance of Wheel and Track
for Soft-Soil Traversal

A

T

I

Cedric Pradalier

ETH Zurich

Development of highly mobile planetary rovers: from hardware optimisation to embedded software

A

T

6

I

Tim

Barfoot

Univ Toronto

Field Testing of Rover GN&C Techniques to Support a Ground-Ice Prospecting Mission to Mars

A

T

6

I

Enrica Zereik

Genoa

Rover Navigation and Visual Odometry: A New Framework for Exploration Activities

A

T

3

I

Takashi Kubota

ISAS,JAXA

Robotics Technology for Planetary Surface Exploration

A

T

I

Eddie Tunstel

APL

Gravity-Independent Locomotion: Potential approaches to robotic mobility on asteroid surfaces

A

P

T

2

I

Stephen Williams

GT

Evaluation of Visual Navigation Methods for Lunar Polar Rovers in Analogous Environments

A

T

2

I

Florian Cordes

DFKI

Heterogeneous Robotic Teams for Exploration of
Steep Crater Environments

A

P

T

6

I

Prithviraj Dasgupta

Omaha

ModRED: A Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robot For Autonomous Extra-terrestrial Exploration and Discovery

A

T

6

I

Mihail Pivtoraiko

CMU

Path Relaxation for Rover Navigation

T

I

 

 

Participants:

For a complete list of 2010 participants in this workshop, click here.  For a view of the group, click here.

 

 

Relation to Previous Workshops:

 

This is the latest in a series of workshops held at IROS 1997, and ICRA ’05, ’07, ‘08. 

For details, see

https://ewh.ieee.org/conf/icra/2008/workshops/PlanetaryRovers/

https://ewh.ieee.org/conf/icra/2007/workshops/SpaceRobotics/

https://ewh.ieee.org/conf/ras2005/workshops/PlanetaryRovers/index.html 

https://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mwm/rover/iros97.html