Mobile Manipulation for the Mars Exploration Rover: A Dexterous and Robust Instrument Positioning System

摘要

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) vehicles, Spirit and Opportunity, cany a unique in situ instrument suite that has been designed to measure and understand the detailed geochemistry and morphology of the surface of Mars. The in situ instrument suite includes the Mossbauer spectrometer (MB) the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS), the microscopic imager (MI), and the rock abrasion tool (RAT). The deployment and placement of these instruments onto the Martian surface (both soil and rock targets) is controlled by the five-degree-of-freedom (5-DOF) instrument deployment device (IDD). The IDD represents the most dexterous robotic manipulator ever flown to another lunar or planetary surface. Note that an extended version of this article is presented in, and additional details concerning the surface operations of the IDD is presented in.