Terrain physical properties derived from orbital data and the first 360 sols of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover observations in Gale Crater

Physical properties of terrains encountered by the Curiosity rover during the first 360 sols of operations have been inferred from analysis of the scour zones produced by Sky Crane Landing System engine plumes, wheel touch down dynamics, pits produced by Chemical Camera (ChemCam) laser shots, rover wheel traverses over rocks, the extent of sinkage into soils, and the magnitude and sign of rover‐based slippage during drives. Results have been integrated with morphologic, mineralogic, and thermophysical properties derived from orbital data, and Curiosity‐based measurements, to understand the nature and origin of physical properties of traversed terrains. The hummocky plains (HP) landing site and traverse locations consist of moderately to well‐consolidated bedrock of alluvial origin variably covered by slightly cohesive, hard‐packed basaltic sand and dust, with both embedded and surface‐strewn rock clasts. Rock clasts have been added through local bedrock weathering and impact ejecta emplacement and form a pavement‐like surface in which only small clasts (<5 to 10 cm wide) have been pressed into the soil during wheel passages. The bedded fractured (BF) unit, site of Curiosity's first drilling activity, exposes several alluvial‐lacustrine bedrock units with little to no soil cover and varying degrees of lithification. Small wheel sinkage values (<1 cm) for both HP and BF surfaces demonstrate that compaction resistance countering driven‐wheel thrust has been minimal and that rover slippage while traversing across horizontal surfaces or going uphill, and skid going downhill, have been dominated by terrain tilts and wheel‐surface material shear modulus values

A Floor Boundary Sensor for Autonomous Robot Navigation

Simple indoor navigation subtasks, such as moving an autonomous platform robot in a corridor parallel to a wall or correcting its trajectory to avoid small obstacles, can be accomplished using reflexive behaviours, without the need of a navigation planner. We describe a dynamic vision module in which reflexes are implemented as feedback systems. Measurements on the image data provide the position of the floor boundary in the coordinate system of the onboard cameras. The system state vector, estimated from the image measurements, represents the position of the platform relative to the walls and is used to compute the corrective commands for the actuators. The system, 2 implemented using standard hardware, has been tested in several conditions including driving in small areas or at high speeds. Introduction The I.R.S.T. autonomous navigation project aims to explore an architecture for indoor navigation and control that consists of several sensor-motor &quot;reflexes &quot;, implemented as class..

Terrain physical properties derived from orbital data and the first 360 sols of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover observations in Gale Crater

Physical properties of terrains encountered by the Curiosity rover during the first 360 sols of operations have been inferred from analysis of the scour zones produced by Sky Crane Landing System engine plumes, wheel touch down dynamics, pits produced by Chemical Camera (ChemCam) laser shots, rover wheel traverses over rocks, the extent of sinkage into soils, and the magnitude and sign of rover‐based slippage during drives. Results have been integrated with morphologic, mineralogic, and thermophysical properties derived from orbital data, and Curiosity‐based measurements, to understand the nature and origin of physical properties of traversed terrains. The hummocky plains (HP) landing site and traverse locations consist of moderately to well‐consolidated bedrock of alluvial origin variably covered by slightly cohesive, hard‐packed basaltic sand and dust, with both embedded and surface‐strewn rock clasts. Rock clasts have been added through local bedrock weathering and impact ejecta emplacement and form a pavement‐like surface in which only small clasts (<5 to 10 cm wide) have been pressed into the soil during wheel passages. The bedded fractured (BF) unit, site of Curiosity's first drilling activity, exposes several alluvial‐lacustrine bedrock units with little to no soil cover and varying degrees of lithification. Small wheel sinkage values (<1 cm) for both HP and BF surfaces demonstrate that compaction resistance countering driven‐wheel thrust has been minimal and that rover slippage while traversing across horizontal surfaces or going uphill, and skid going downhill, have been dominated by terrain tilts and wheel‐surface material shear modulus values. Key Points Curiosity landing site consolidated bedrock covered by packed sand with clasts Curiosity drill site is alluvial‐lacustrine bedrock unit with little soil cover Rover slip/skid dominated by terrain tilt and wheel‐surface material shear modulusPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108017/1/jgre20266.pd

Navigation by Tracking Vanishing Points

Many indoor scenes, like offices and corridors, can be modelled as block worlds. 3D visual infomation can be extracted from images of these scenes by using vanishing points, which are the points of the image plane where parallel lines in space appear to intersect. In this paper, it is shown that a priori information on the mutual direction of straight lines in space allows the extraction of vanishing points from images of indoor scenes even in the presence of curved lines. Experiments on real images are presented in which a simple method based upon the location of vanishing points is used to recover the rotational component of robot motion. The recovery of reliable visual information from images taken by one or more cameras mounted on a moving robot can be used to control passive navigation of the robot itself. Along with the reconstruction and interpretation of the 3D environment, methods for motion analysis (Fenmena &amp; Thompson, 1979; Haralik &amp; Lee, 1983; Hildreth, 1984; Horn &amp; Schunc..