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Estimation, Search, and Planning (ESP) Research Group

Place revisiting for planetary rovers: An enabling technology and field testing of three mission concepts

Authors
  1. Timothy D. Barfoot
  2. Braden E. Stenning
  3. Jonathan D. Gammell
  4. Chi Hay Tong
  5. Colin McManus
  6. Laszlo-Peter Berczi
  7. Gordon R. Osinski
  8. Michael Daly
  9. C. Dickinson
Publication Date
Abstract

Planetary rovers to date have been operated mainly in a serial mode; they are driven from one place to the next, away from the lander, and seldom return to previously visited places. We have been developing a visual navigation technique, called network of reusable paths (NRP), that can be thought of as a low-computational-cost version of simultaneous localization and mapping coupled to a path-tracking controller. The result is that a rover can be returned accurately to any place it has previously visited using only visual feedback; this enables science to be gathered from multiple sites in parallel. We will describe how NRP works, and present field test results of two mission concepts where we have made use of this technology: a lunar-sample-return scenario and a Mars-methane-hunting scenario.

Publication Details
Type
Abstract-Refereed Conference Paper
Conference
Planetary Rovers Workshop, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
Location
Karlsruhe, Germany
Manuscript
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BibTeX Entry
@inproceedings{barfoot_prw13,
author = {Timothy D Barfoot and Braden E Stenning and Jonathan D Gammell and Chi Hay Tong and Colin McManus and Laszlo-Peter Berczi and Gordon R Osinski and Michael Daly and C Dickinson},
title = {Place revisiting for planetary rovers: An enabling technology and field testing of three mission concepts},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Planetary Rovers Workshop, {IEEE} International Conference on Robotics and Automation ({ICRA})},
year = {2013},
address = {Karlsruhe, Germany},
month = {10 } # may,
}