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Estimation, Search, and Planning (ESP) Research Group

Navigation on the line: Traversability analysis and path planning for extreme-terrain rappelling rovers

Authors
  1. Michael Paton
  2. Marlin P. Strub
  3. Travis Brown
  4. Rebecca J. Greene
  5. Jacob Lizewski
  6. Vandan Patel
  7. Jonathan D. Gammell
  8. Issa A. D. Nesnas
Publication Date
Abstract

Many areas of scientific interest in planetary exploration, such as lunar pits, icy-moon crevasses, and Martian craters, are inaccessible to current wheeled rovers. Rappelling rovers can safely traverse these steep surfaces, but require techniques to navigate their complex terrain. This dynamic navigation is inherently time-critical and communication constraints (e.g. delays and small communication windows) will require planetary systems to have some autonomy.

Autonomous navigation for Martian rovers is well studied on moderately sloped and locally planar surfaces, but these methods do not readily transfer to tethered systems in non-planar 3D environments. Rappelling rovers in these situations have additional challenges, including terrain-tether interaction and its effects on rover stability, path planning and control.

This paper presents novel traversability analysis and path planning algorithms for rappelling rovers operating on steep terrains that account for terrain-tether interaction and the unique stability and reachability constraints of a rapelling system. The system is evaluated with a series of simulations and an analogue mission. In simulation, the planner was shown to reliably find safe paths down a 55 degree slope when a stable tether-terrain configuration exists and never recommended an unsafe path when one did not. In a planetary analogue mission, elements of the system were used to autonomously navigate Axel, a JPL rappelling rover, down a 30 degree slope with 95% autonomy by distance travelled over 46 meters.

Publication Details
Type
Full-Paper-Refereed Conference Paper
Conference
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Pages
7034–7041
Digital Object IdentifierDOI
10.1109/IROS45743.2020.9341409
NotesAward
Best Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics Paper Award Finalist
Manuscript
Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
Google Scholar
BibTeX Entry
@inproceedings{paton_iros20,
author = {Michael Paton and Marlin P Strub and Travis Brown and Rebecca J Greene and Jacob Lizewski and Vandan Patel and Jonathan D Gammell and Issa A D Nesnas},
title = {Navigation on the line: Traversability analysis and path planning for extreme-terrain rappelling rovers},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {IEEE/RSJ} International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems ({IROS})},
year = {2020},
pages = {7034--7041},
month = {24 } # oct #{ -- 31 } # dec,
doi = {10.1109/IROS45743.2020.9341409},
}