New planetary rovers for long-range Mars science and sample return

摘要

Abstract: There are significant international efforts underway toplace mobile robots (`rovers') on the surface of Mars.This follows on the recent successful NASA MarsPathfinder flight of summer 1997. In that mission, the11$PLU Kg Sojourner rover explored a small 50 meterlocale about its lander over a several week period.Future planned science missions of the Mars SurveyorProgram are more aggressive, seeking to autonomouslysurvey planetary climate, life and resources overmultiple kilometers and many months duration. Thesemissions will also retrieve collected sample materialsback to a Mars Ascent Vehicle for more detailedanalysis on Earth. In support of these future missionswe are developing and field testing new rovertechnology concepts. We first overview the design andinitial operations of SRR-1 (Sample Return Rover), anovel 10 kg-class four wheel, hybrid composite-metalvehicle for rapid (10 - 30 cm/sec) autonomous location,rendezvous, and retrieval of collected samples underintegrated visual and beacon guidance. SRR is a light88 $MUL 55 $MUL 36 (LWH) cm$+3$/ vehicle collapsing toless than one third its deployed field volume, andcarrying a powerful, visually-servoed all-compositemanipulator. We then sketch development of the FIDOrover (Field Integrated Design and Operations), a new50$PLU kg, six wheel, approximately 100 $MUL 80 $MUL 50(LWH) cm$+3$/, high mobility, multi-km range sciencevehicle which includes mast-mounted multi-spectralstereo, bore-sighted IR point spectrometer, robot armwith attached microscope, and body- mounted rocksampling corer. Currently in integration phase, FIDOrover will first be tested in September, 1998,`MarsYard (JPL)' operations, followed by CY99full-scale terrestrial field simulations of a plannedMars '03 multi- kilometer roving mission (Athena-basedscience rover payload), demonstrating remote scienceselection, autonomous navigation, in situ sampleanalysis, and robotic sample collection functions.!20