CREST AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC SCIENTIST: DEVELOPING A CLOSED-LOOP SCIENCE EXPLORATION CAPABILITY FOR EUROPEAN MARS MISSIONS

摘要

In common with most Mars missions, the currentrncommunications baseline for Europe’s ExoMars Roverrnmission exhibits constrained data links with Earth,rnmaking remote operations difficult. The time taken torntransmit and react to planning data places a naturalrnlimit on the amount of science exploration that can bernachieved in any given period. In order to increase thernpotential science return, autonomous sciencernassessment and response is an attractive option andrnworthy of investigation. In this work, we havernintegrated technologies and techniques developed inrnprevious studies and used the resulting test bed torndemonstrate an autonomous, opportunistic sciencernconcept on a representative robotic platform. Inrnaddition to progressing the system design approachrnand individual autonomy components, we havernintroduced a methodology for autonomous sciencernassessment based on terrestrial field science practice.