Self‐reliant rovers for increased mission productivity
Daniel Gaines, Gary Doran, Michael Paton, Brandon Rothrock, Joseph Russino, Ryan Mackey, Robert C. Anderson, Raymond Francis, Chet Joswig, Heather Justice, Ksenia Kolcio, Gregg Rabideau, Steve Schaffer, Jacek Sawoniewicz, A. R. Vasavada, Vincent Wai‐Sun Wong, Kathryn Yu, Ali–akbar Agha–mohammadi
Abstract
Abstract Achieving consistently high levels of productivity has been a challenge for Mars surface missions. While the rovers have made major discoveries and dramatically increased our understanding of Mars, they require a great deal of interaction from the operations teams, and achieving mission objectives can take longer than anticipated when productivity is paced by the ground teams' ability to react. We have conducted a project to explore technologies and techniques for creating self‐reliant rovers (SRR): rovers that are able to maintain high levels of productivity with reduced reliance on ground interactions. This paper describes the design of SRR and a prototype implementation that we deployed on a research rover. We evaluated the system by conducting a simulated campaign in which members of the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) science team used our rover to explore a geographical region. The evaluation demonstrated the system's ability to maintain high levels of productivity with limited communication with operators.