Seeker—Autonomous Long‐range Rover Navigation for Remote Exploration

• DOI: 10.1002/rob.21528
• Publication Date: 2015-01-30T14:48:13Z
• Authors: Mark Woods; Andrew Shaw; Estelle Tidey; Bach Van Pham; Lacroix Simon; Raja Mukherji; Brian Maddison; Gary Cross; Aron Kisdi; Wayne Tubby; Gianfranco Visentin; Guillermo Chong
• Keywords: Mars rover; Mars landing

Under the umbrella of European Space Agency (ESA) StarTiger program, a rapid prototyping study called Seeker was initiated. A range partners from space and nonspace sectors were brought together to develop prototype Mars rover system capable autonomously exploring several kilometers highly representative terrain over three‐day period. This paper reports on our approach final field trials that took place in Atacama Desert, Chile. Long‐range navigation associated remote are new departure for ESA, this activity therefore represents novel initiative area. The primary focus determine if current computer vision artificial intelligence based software could enable such capability Mars, given limit around 200 m per Martian day. does not seek introduce theoretical techniques or compare various approaches, but it offers unique perspective their behavior environment. navigated 5.05 km during one work is part wider effort achieve step change autonomous future Mars/lunar exploration platforms.