Atacama Desert Trek

Introduction

The purpose of the Lunar Rover Demonstration - Atacama Desert Trek is to demonstrate enabling capabilities for high-performance planetary exploration by mobile robots. The project, part of the CMU Lunar Rover Initiative, will demonstrate and validate these capabilities in terrestrial analogs to telerobotic planetary exploration, and provide critical technologies to NASA for near-term planetary missions and to the private sector for planetary enterprise. The Central focus of this task is to successfully deliver its level one milestone: completion of a 200 km field trial traverse across Chile's Atacama desert, demonstrating robust locomotion, navigation, visualization, and communication capabilities. The field mission will occur during June and July 1997.

FY97 project goals are to:

• Complete fabrication and integration of component systems on Nomad, the next generation prototype Lunar Rover.
• Demonstrate robust locomotion, navigation, visualization, and communications in a 200 km, unattended traverse in the planetary analog terrain of Chile's Atacama desert.
• Perform end-to-end trial under remote control; teleoperation and autonomous control with simulated time delays.
• Provide a realistic desert experience for remote novice operators through high-quality imagery and a virtual environment interface.

A. Significant Activities and Events During this Period

Acquired and tested satellite relay equipment, including all network components (muxes, modems, cables, rack mounts) during full-up testing in The Run.

Demonstrated position estimates from onboard sensors.

Began intercontinental teleoperation for the Level 1 Milestone: 200 km Atacama Desert Trek at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center on 15 June, 1997. See NASA Press Release 97-136.

Performed a week of field trial operations with scientists working remotely at NASA Ames, employing ground truth support from the away team and Chilean geologists in the Atacama. Operations were extremely successful; a potential fossil was found in situ (it is now believed to be non-organic), five planetary missions were simulated, (including Mars-like time delay), and remote geologists were convinced of the viability of telescience. teleoperations.

Achieved the longest distance robotic traverse while performing remote science: 1.3 kilometers, with 10 science sites.

Validated use of color stereo cameras with resolution of the human eye as a technology for performing remote science.

Tested meteorite-detection sensors: vision, magnetometers, metal detector. Successfully detected some meteorite samples placed in the environment.

Demonstrated 1918 meters of safeguarded teleoperation and 1498 meters of obstacle-avoidance autonomy on Nomad as of 1 July.

Demonstrated novice user interface at the Carnegie Science Center.

Shipped Nomad, Command Truck, support hardware, and away team to Chile.

Provided live demo during University TRIWG session. A software bug prevented full-up operation of the novice controls during the demo, but live imagery was received, and autonomous driving was demonstrated after the main presentation.

Established project Web pages with live telemetry and sample images: http://img.arc.nasa.gov/Nomad/, http://www.ri.cmu.edu/atacama-trek/, http://www.entelchile.net/Nomad/.

B. Plans for the Next Reporting Period

Demonstrate Skyline Position Estimation technology (part of the Augmented Reality task).

Demonstrate patterned search capability needed for Antarctic Meteorite Search.

Demonstrate chassis stowage and deployment capability.

Validate use of 4 wheel drive locomotion.

Validate use of panospheric camera and immersive display as a tool for remote driving.

Evaluate high bandwidth communication network.

Return Nomad to the US for clean up and preparation for ice operations.

C. Schedule

D. Concerns/Issues