Where to Map? Iterative Rover-Copter Path Planning for Mars Exploration

• Published in: IEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 2123 - 2130
• Main Authors: Sasaki, Takahiro, Otsu, Kyohei, Thakker, Rohan, Haesaert, Sofie, Agha-mohammadi, Ali-akbar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.04.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Computer simulation; Cooperating robots; Drones; Hazard identification; Helicopters; Iterative methods; Localization; Mars; Mars exploration; Mars landing; Mars missions; Mars rovers; motion and path planning; multi-robot systems; Path planning; Perturbation methods; Satellites; space robotics and automation; Space vehicles; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 2377-3766; 2377-3766
• DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2970650

In addition to conventional ground rovers, the Mars 2020 mission will send a helicopter to Mars. The copter's highresolution data helps the rover to identify small hazards such as steps and pointy rocks, as well as providing rich textual information useful to predict perception performance. In this letter, we consider a three-agent system composed of a Mars rover, copter, and orbiter. The objective is to provide good localization to the rover by selecting an optimal path that minimizes the localization uncertainty accumulation during the rover's traverse. To achieve this goal, we quantify the localizability as a goodness measure associated with the map, and conduct a joint-space search over rover`s path and copter's perceptual actions given prior information from the orbiter. We jointly address where to map by the copter and where to drive by the rover using the proposed iterative copter-rover path planner. We conducted numerical simulations using the map of Mars 2020 landing site to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed planner.