Behavior control for robotic exploration of planetary surfaces

Author

Gat, Erann ; Desai, Rajiv ; Ivlev, Robert ; Loch, John ; Miller, David P.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

Volume

10

Issue

4

fYear

1994

fDate

8/1/1994 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

490

Lastpage

503

Abstract

This paper describes a series of robots developed at JPL to demonstrate the feasibility of using a behavior-control approach to control small robots on planetary surfaces. The round-trip light-time delay makes direct teleoperation of a mobile robot on a planetary surface impossible. Planetary rovers must therefore possess a certain degree of autonomy. However, small robots can only support small computers (due mostly to power, not size constraints). Behavior control provides a means of autonomous control that requires very little computation. The robots described in this paper all used 8-bit, 1-MIP microprocessors with as little as 4 k and no more than 40 k of memory, and extremely simple sensors. Despite these limitations they reliably perform both autonomous navigation and manipulation in both indoor and outdoor rough-terrain environments

Keywords

computerised navigation; mobile robots; path planning; planetary surfaces; space research; JPL; autonomous control; autonomous navigation; behavior-control approach; indoor environments; manipulation; outdoor rough-terrain environments; planetary surfaces; robotic exploration; round-trip light-time delay; small robots; Delay; Instruments; Laboratories; Mars; Mobile robots; Propulsion; Robot control; Robot sensing systems; Space technology; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1042-296X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/70.313099

Filename

313099