Proposal Submitted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

February 18, 1997

Antarctic Meteorite Search Field Demonstration

Principal Investigator:
William Whittaker
	(412) 268-6559

Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

For the period 10/1/97 to 9/30/98

Amount requested: $1,000,000

1.	Introduction
Scientists studying meteorites have discovered compelling evidence for life on Mars. This discovery calls for response, putting before the nation and science community the impetus to charter missions to search for extraterrestrial life on Earth and in the far reaches of space. Carnegie Mellon University proposes a three-year program that will produce and demonstrate efficient robotic search for Antarctic meteorites.
A robotic trial in a cold desert is the beginning point. In the summer of 1997, Nomad — CMU’s Atacama Field Trial robot — will navigate through barren terrain for months and miles using transcontinental control. Nomad will incorporate visual servoing and a suite of sensors to demonstrate fundamental robotic meteorite search capabilities. 
Leveraging on technologies developed for the desert and drawing on a foundation of research in Antarctic exploration, the robot will be deployed to Antarctica for meteorite search demonstrations in the 1997-1998 expedition season. This meteorobot will search for meteorites, augmenting ongoing human search parties. In the 1998-1999 expedition season, the meteorobot will be deployed to a blue ice region to demonstrate advanced perception systems designed to identify and classify surface meteorites. Beginning in the 1999-2000 expedition season, meteorobots will perform extended search operations under shared remote control, in a synthesis of surface perception and autonomous searching techniques.
2.	Objectives
The primary goal of this program is to accelerate the rate of collection and number of samples of Antarctic meteorites found using robots. In a few years, such robots could find hundreds of meteorites not visible to humans, overlooked by humans, or in areas not covered by human search.
The top-level objectives of the program are to:
•	Enable robotic-assisted search for Antarctic meteorites
•	Perform searches in areas challenging to humans
•	Have remote scientists supervise the control search
•	Find meteorites on blue ice and not visible to humans or cameras
The technical goal of the program is to achieve robust robot performance in harsh environments under remote and infrequent remote control. The approach falls under the lunar paradigm in the sense that Antarctica is a direct lunar analog of terrain (barren), south pole temperatures (220 K), and communication (non-LOS to direct link).
The detailed technical objectives are to:
•	Demonstrate perception and localization of meteorites within 1 m.
•	Demonstrate planning and navigation for efficient meteorite search.
•	Demonstrate a scientist interface enabling remote geologists to oversee search.
3.	Justification
This program is justified by the need to increase the rate of collection and number of collected samples of Antarctic meteorites that may be of Martian origin, in order to provide additional information on the chemical and physical composition of the surface of Mars and allow examination for additional evidence of any past Martian life. Of the 15,000 meteorites collected to date only 12 are believed to be of Martian origin. The most interesting ones have been found in Antarctica; specifically ALH84001 and EETA79001 were collected from the Allan Hills ice field and Elephant Moraine, respectively. Robotic search in Antarctica will support and dramatically extend the human search for meteorites.
Development and evaluation of a robot capable of extended search for meteorites in Antarctica 	will further NASA’s search for planetary life. Such a robotic mission will also serve as 	a driver for robotic technologies, a forum for demonstrating results, and a clear step 	toward exploration of the planets. The technical objectives of scientific exploration, 	environmental survival, and self-sustained mission performance are fundamental to 	NASA’s charter in exploration and are directly relevant to the joint NASA/ NSF 	initiative to operate in the Antarctica as an analog to the Moon and Mars. This program will also forge new partnerships across the science and technology communities.
Antarctica’s lengthy diurnal cycle and remote location will simulate conditions and transmission delays encountered in a mission to the Moon, making an Antarctic robotic exploration the ideal planetary paradigm of robotic search for meteorites on the Moon. This scientific pursuit, now encumbered by Earth-bound biological contamination of meteorites, could take flight in lunar terrain virtually untouched by humans. 
4.	Approach
This program will:
•	Build upon the technologies and demonstrations of the Atacama Field Trial and the Lunar Rover Demonstration programs.
•	Deepen Nomad technologies across the board: For example, retrofit desert robot locomotion into theice meteorobot, enable direct rover-to-satellite communications.
•	Leverage on off-the-shelf sensing and navigation technologies.
•	Develop, integrate, and test in a recurrent nine-month cycle.
•	Field our prototypes early to achieve performance.
•	Culminate yearly efforts in Antarctic demonstrations of escalating challenges.
•	Develop strong partnerships with ANSMET, government, and commercial organizations to make the program an absolute success.
4.1	Human Search for Antarctic meteorites
For over four decades, scientific search teams from around the world have endured Antarctica’s harsh climate and treacherous terrain in ventures that are tedious, often dangerous, and always unpredictable. Search teams can spend weeks with little or no yield — or discover hundreds of meteorites within a few square kilometers.
Today, the meteorite search strategy is based on a sound understanding of probable sites. Using satellite and aerial imagery, scientists target exposed ice bedrock migrating from the central to the coastal regions. Of particular interest are areas where this bedrock has collided with the massive transantarctic mountains to create new landscapes.
In the field, however, the human search for meteorites is largely confined to visual inspection of the surface of ice and moraines. Researchers identify meteorites, mark their locations with flags, map reference areas, and carefully collect the meteorites. Critical to this process is absolute protection against contamination; the meteorites are preserved in their frozen state and sent to ANSMET facilities at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for analysis and classification.
Meteorites vary in size, shape, and composition. While typically 2 cm to 15 cm across, meteorites as large as 1 m across have been discovered. Generally, their shape is flat elliptical or near spherical, with extruded features and a glossy brownish to black color attributed to a fusion crust. The majority of the discovered meteorites are stony meteorites, some of which contain iron or other magnetic elements. Some iron meteorites have also been found.
4.2	Robotic-assisted meteorite detection demonstration
The meteorobot will extend the human search for meteorites by tireless work in cold and full-day cycles, and by detecting surface meteorites obscured to the human eye by blowing or drifting snow. In full collaboration with U.S. scientists and the Antarctic field party S058, the meteorobot will traverse an open blue ice field in a search pattern. 
To detect both metallic and non-metallic meteorites, the meteorobot will use a sensor suite consisting of metal detectors and magnetometers (to detect iron), infrared (to detect silicates) multi-spectral close-up imagery, and optical spectrometers. Robotic deployment of these technologies in Antarctica will offer substantial value to human search techniques. In a compact, mobile package of sensors and onboard computing, a robot will acquire a complete field of data and process size, depth, geometry, and elemental composition of potential meteorites. 
Once the robot detects a meteorite candidate, its onboard computers will fuse sensor data and record meteorite depth, position, size, and geometry. The meteorobot would then plant a flag or place a visible marker denoting the location of the rock for subsequent retrieval by the ANSMET team. If the initial search yielded a significant number of meteorites, the robot will repeat the search of the same field for multiple seasons. 

The support team would collect the meteorites identified by the robot, using electronic data (GPS location of the find, hardcopies of sensor measurements, in situ photograph of the meteorite, flag number, etc.) and physical marks, such as flags, placed by the robots. 
4.3	Meteorite confirmation demonstration
Humans rely primarily on vision to recognize surface meteorites. Researchers are trained to recognize meteorites by example: by reviewing samples of meteorite and non-meteorite rocks, they fine tune visual skills for on-site identification of meteorites. Robots could be trained to have similar capabilities using color imagery of meteorite and native Antarctic rocks, neural nets, and other machine learning and classification techniques. Color, texture, and shape would serve as important visible features. Since meteorites are often recognized as being somehow “different” from local rocks, some training could be done “live” on site. Several of the needed vision techniques already exist and have been used in planetary exploration programs. 
For Antarctica, the robot will be trained to visually scan a cluster of rocks on blue ice, segmenting rock images into individual objects for automatic classification. By relying on constrained visual search, the meteorobot will cover a wider area and quickly eliminate the vast majority of surface rocks. Having down-selected the possible meteorites, the robot would closely examine each candidate and use its non-visual sensors to provide more reliable estimates of their composition.
4.4	Robotic search demonstration
Robotic search for meteorites will be a natural evolution of current robotic capabilities. Drawing on patterning techniques employed now by many mobile robots, such as the NASA robotic harvester Demeter, the meteorobot will detect meteorites using a priori delineation of the search area to plan and execute a back and forth search pattern. The width of the search strip will be a function of the field-of-view of the sensors: for subsurface detection, a 2 to 4 m sensor boom could be used; for visual sensing, the meteorobot could cut a wide swath by using several cameras and / or a pan-and-tilt mechanism to point the camera(s). A small overlap between strips would ensure complete coverage and allow quilting of subsurface or visual imagery to form highly detailed maps.
Proven in ground and air transportation, and navigation of mobile robots, a differential Global Positioning System (D-GPS) will provide accurate (less than 50 cm) position determination of the meteorobot. The differential transceiver will be mounted on a hill by humans at deployment, or at a flat enough location to allow line-of-sight. 
A meteorobot will use safeguarded teleoperation, a synthesis of robotic technologies demonstrated successfully in the Lunar Rover Demonstration telerobotics program. While responsive to human intervention and remote control, the meteorobot will automatically detect and avoid obstacles as it travels. For a relatively slow moving robot, 
simple avoidance algorithms, such as those employed by Sojourner, have proven to be effective and computationally tractable.
Combining these capabilities, a meteorobot in Antarctica could confirm a meteorite, record its position via DGPS, create a detailed map of the magnetic field profile, photograph the rock in situ, and tag its location with a visual marker. This system will enable researchers to readily find the meteorite and perform more detailed analysis in situ before packaging the rock for transport.
4.5	Communications and remote science demonstration
A communication link between the control station and the robot will be established for transmitting commands and receiving sensor data. Processing and compressing data using on-board computers will reduce bandwidth requirements. The program will develop an interface that will allow remote scientists to view telemetry and video from the search field team. The interface will include tools for data logging and data annotation.
For communication from Antarctica to the U.S., the meteorobot will use polar orbiting satellites visible from McMurdo Station, as well as existing data and voice links to the continental U.S.
5.	Advances over the state-of-art
This program will advance the state-of-the-art in search for meteorites by:
•	Demonstrating robotic search, detection, and confirmation of meteorites.
•	Expanding human search for submerged meteorites or meteorites deposited in areas not covered by human search. 
•	Dramatically simplifying the tedious task of localizing meteorites.
•	Accelerating the meteorite characterization process with in-situ confirmation of samples.
•	Enabling transcontinental participation of scientists through teleprescence interfaces.
•	Increasing the rate of search coverage for Antarctic meteorites. Meteorobots will operate on 24-hour cycles in adverse conditions to achieve thorough coverage of scientifically interesting regions.
•	Developing and demonstrating robust robot technologies, such as robotic mobility, robot control over a direct satellite link, and others for prolonged unattended operations in the harshest environment on Earth. 

6.	Schedule and milestones
Beginning in FY97, a collaborative initiative of Earth scientists and robotic scientists will produce robots to search key areas of the Antarctic continent over four seasons, each with escalating difficulty, duration, and aspiration. Within two years, the program will produce the first meteorite found by a robot. 
The key activities and milestone demonstrations of the program will be the following:
FY97
•	Scientists provide guidance in the development of robotic perception systems for remote meteorite search. Scientists and roboticists work cooperatively to formulate the program agenda.
•	Jul 97: An existing desert robotic explorer demonstrates vision-based navigation and localization of interesting artifacts.
•	Program develops integrated sensor suite for detection of meteorites. With direction from planetary scientists, research produces reliable perception for identifying meteorites using multiple sensing modes.
FY98
•	Dec 97: Robot searches for meteorites on Antarctic blue ice. The test program will be conducted in collaboration with a specialist assigned from field party S058, directed by Dr. Ralph Harvey.
•	Program hardens meteorobot systems, including the locomotion and power generation systems.
•	Program develops technologies for classifying surface meteorites by training sensors using samples in the ANSMET Meteorite Collection at the Johnson Space Center. The sensors automatically locate meteorites of various sizes in testbed environments.
FY99
•	Dec 98: A single robot system controlled by a single operator searches a 10 sq km Antarctic blue ice field in the Allan Hills Main Ice Field. The robot pinpoints multiple meteorite locations. The search party sends the first meteorite discovered by the meteorobot to the Smithsonian Institution. Tens of remote scientists view data downlinked from the rover.
•	Program develops second meteorobot. 
•	Program develops coordination techniques for formation driving, and integrates surface perception with task-autonomous search techniques and confirmation sensors.
FY00
•	Dec 99: A two-robot team controlled by a single operator searches a 50 sq km Antarctic blue ice field.

•	With support from robotic scientists, Earth scientists remotely supervise the autonomous robotic meteorite search, and assess and annotate data transmitted from the field.
7.	Deliverables
The deliverables for FY98, are:
•	First robotic search for Antarctic meteorites. the search will demonstrate vision-based navigation to meteorite candidates, deployment of detection sensors, and data acquisition/logging/annotation/transmission.
•	First hardened meteorobot

The program deliverables, are:
•	Meteorite finds from ice fields not explored by humans 
•	Meteorite finds not visible to humans, i.e. meteorites covered by a thin layer of snow or in shallow submergence <10 cm into blue ice
•	Two robots for autonomous search of Antarctic meteorites
•	Capability for remote search of Antarctic meteorites with science participation through user interfaces
8.	Dual-use potential
Dual-use potential of robotic search for Antarctic meteorites includes:
•	Utilization of the meteorite detection technologies in the field of mine detection and localization. We anticipate a strong collaboration between the Meteorite Search and the De-mining project at Carnegie Mellon.
•	Transfer of the meteorobot locomotion, power, and communication technologies to DARPA’s Small Unit Operations (SUO) UGV program.
•	The “strategic” search planning has numerous civilian (e.g. search for fossils, and pre-historic artifacts) as well as military applications (e.g. localization of buried ammunition).
9.	Participants, partnerships, and facilities
9.1	Participants
•	Field Robotics Center, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.
•	Mars Exploration Program.
•	NSF ANSMET Program and Case Western Reserve University, Dr. Ralph Harvey, 
team leader of ANSMET S058.
•	University of Pittsburgh, Dr. William Cassidy, foremost expert on Antarctic meteorites, 15 seasons in Antarctica, leader of the team that discovered ALH84001. 
9.2	Partnerships
For this program to be successful we anticipate several critical partnerships with government, commercial, and educational organizations.
•	Meteorite Curation Laboratory, Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX: Center for classification, storage, and curation of meteorites. 
•	Defense Research Establishment (DRES), Canada: Meteorite detection/confirmation technologies, testing, and proving grounds.
•	De-mining Program of the Multi-interdisciplinary University Research Institute; University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University of Texas (Arlington), Carnegie Mellon University: meteorite detection/confirmation technologies.
•	Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Meteorite detection/confirmation technologies.
•	NASA Ames Research Center: Scientist user interface, meteorite confirmation technologies, and vision-based navigation.
•	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: Transantarctic communications using TDRSS and PORTCOM transceivers.
•	Potential commercial partners: Foerster, Inc. (meteorite detection/confirmation), Trimble (D-GPS), and Redzone Robotics, Inc. (meteorobot integration and testing, planning and logistics for the Antarctic demonstrations).
9.3	Facilities
The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is uniquely qualified to perform the proposed research, due to its extensive experience in creating and operating scores of field robots, its experience in Antarctic operations with the Dante I robot at Mount Erebus, and its decade of planetary rover research for NASA.
The Robotics Institute was established in 1979 as the nation’s first comprehensive robotics research center to conduct research in robotic technologies relevant to scientific, industrial, and governmental needs. The Institute has grown into a powerful, interdisciplinary research organization, which draws upon Carnegie Mellon’s strengths in computer science, engineering, science, and industrial administration.
The Institute has a staff of over 250 personnel, over 50 graduate students enrolled in affiliated programs, and 70 graduate students enrolled in the Robotics Ph.D. program. The Institute is organized into thirteen dedicated research laboratories and three program centers, which cover the spectrum of robotic research initiatives and encompass a wealth of robotic expertise. The Institute’s depth, breadth, and record of accomplishments is well 
established. The Institute pursues a comprehensive research agenda that culminates in competent, working robots.
10.	Budget
The budget for FY98 consists of: 
Item	Cost	
Personnel	470,000	
Travel
(not including field demo)	30,000	
Operating expenses	60,000	
Equipment	130,000	
Overhead	310,000	
		
Total	1,000,000	
11.	Closure
CMU TRIWG programs are building complementary technologies that stand on their own merit, and also synergize to produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The Meteorite Search Technology program provides the basis for perception and automatic search and exploration strategies. The Meteorite Search Demonstration program allows for these technologies to be fielded and hardened for flight scenarios. The Unified Lander-Rover is a spacecraft paradigm that could deliver a higher fraction of scientific payload to planetary surfaces while still permitting the mobility required for exploration. Finally, Operational Autonomy promises the ability for such rovers to autonomously perform ambitious high-return missions when teleoperation is infeasible due to task complexity and communications limitations. But CMU goes beyond creation and promulgation of knowledge, using the REC to carry development to a commercial standard by productizing and hardening NASA technologies for industry.