Autonomy and remote control experiment for lunar rover missions

摘要

Teleoperation will be used for rover control during lunar missions. However the interesting places for scientific investigations are located in difficult areas: south pole, deep craters in which communications to the earth will be limited and possibly interrupted. To investigate the feasibility of such missions, a testbed has been built in order to check the feasibility of remote control of the rover in presence of important time delays with low rate communications as well as to demonstrate the capability of autonomous motion during communications blackout periods. The testbed consists of a 6x6 vehicle able to move on a moon representative terrain either in an autonomous mode or in low communication rate teleoperation called TESA. This paper describes the vehicle, its control and the results obtained during the tests.