FROM MEDWAY TO MARS AND HOME FOR TEA: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARS EXPLORATION CENTRE

摘要

At the University of Kent, we have developed a prototype Mars Exploration Centre (MEC) which provides remote desktop explorers with the opportunity to manage simulated Mars roving vehicle missions over the Internet. Model Mars rovers travel over a 5m by 5m Mars diorama, and are controlled via a web interface available to any registered Internet-connected computer. Leading-edge embedded computer system and Internet technologies have allowed us to introduce radical improvements in realism and learning outcomes for users over other current initiatives in this field. Our roving vehicles are equipped with a variety of sensors, including a camera, and can exhibit many programmable partial failure modes. A stream of housekeeping telemetry data is presented to the user via the web interface together with two images: one captured by an on-board camera and the other taken from zenith to simulate observations made by a Mars orbiting spacecraft. Interface data is delayed by several seconds to provide limited experience of the long round-trip-light-time scene in real planetary exploration missions. In this way, we are able to make the mission simulations more complex and challenging to users. Teams of desktop explorers - typically four to six in number - can be tasked to complete a certain mission in a fixed time under a variety of constraints and with partial failures occurring (apparently) randomly. Development of skills in planning, problem solving, teamwork, negotiation and resource management become important learning outcomes of the MEC experience. In this paper, we provide a detailed account of the system design of the MEC and describe the results achieved in our testing of the prototype facility at Walking With Robots, a residential summer school for school pupils in the UK organized by the Robot School.