Lunar Rover Navigation--Performance

Lunar Rover Navigation 1996
Performance

Ratler at the Moon Yard


Field Trials:


What:

  • Autonomous travel with guidance at boundaries of test site
  • "Suicidal" instructions sent to test hazard avoidance

Where:

  • The Moon Yard
    • A carefully constructed area of lunar analog terrain designed after the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 landing sites.
  • The Slag Heap
    • A large area of diverse terrain and topography in Pittsburgh
  • The REC

Milestones:


Planned:

  • On-board computing
  • Laser scanner hazard detection
  • Stereo with 4 cameras
  • 50 km traverse in diverse, lunar analog terrain under safeguarded teleoperation control

Achieved:

  • All of the above
  • Traverse 43 km under safeguarded teleoperation control
  • Traverse 7 km under teleoperation control
  • Total of 50 km traversal

Traversal
Statistics:


Traversal Distance at the Moon Yard (km)13.3
Traversal Distance at the Slag Heap (km)17.4
Traversal Distance at the REC (km)12.0
Typical travel speed (cm/s)50
Maximum travel speed (cm/s)70

Reliability:


Error rates:

Errors per km with stereo vision
(16 failures over 6,700 m)
2.4
Errors per km with stereo vision
(36 failures over 42,730 m)
0.8

Comparison
to 1995:


Metric
19951996 Difference Factor
Total travel under safeguarded teleop control (m) 13,25042,7303.2
Typical continuous travel speed (cm/s) 15503.3
Maximum continuous travel speed (cm/s) 20703.5
Reliability of safeguarding (errors/km) (est.) -0.83

Observations:


Strengths:

  • Effective obstacle avoidance at maximum vehicle speed of 70 cm/s.
  • Software system runs indefinitely long: no memory leaks.

Weaknesses:

  • Recovery maneuvers after laser scanner induced stop are sometimes risky
  • Laser processing is too conservative on slopes


Lunar Rover Navigation 1996 - deano@ri.cmu.edu (last updated in Nov. 1996)
Comments? Suggestions? Requests? Please send e-mail to lri-feedback+@cs.cmu.edu.