Autonomous Navigation and Control of a Mars Rover

Abstract

A Mars Rover will nerd to be able to navigate autonomously kilometers at a time. This paper outlines the sensing, perception, planning, and execution monitoring systems that are currently being designed for the rover. The sensing system is based around sicreo vision. The interpretation of the images use a registration of the depth map with a global height map provided by an orbiting spacecraft. Safe, low energy paths are then planned through the map, and expectations of what the rover's articulation sensors should sense arc generated. These expectations are then used to ensure that the planned path is correctly being executed.