Engineering topics

Lee, Susan Y.

Publications and source records attributed to Lee, Susan Y..

7 records

NASA NTRS2012

Tele-Operated Lunar Rover Navigation Using Lidar

Near real-time tele-operated driving on the lunar surface remains constrained by bandwidth and signal latency despite the Moon s relative proximity. As part of our work within NASA s Human-Robotic Systems Project (HRS), we have developed a stand-alone modular LIDAR based safeguarded tele-operation system of hardware, middleware, navigation software and user interface. The system has been installed and tested on two distinct NASA rovers-JSC s Centaur2 lunar rover prototype and ARC s KRex research rover- and tested over several kilometers of tele-operated driving at average sustained speeds of 0.15 - 0.25 m/s around rocks, slopes and simulated lunar craters using a deliberately constrained telemetry link. The navigation system builds onboard terrain and hazard maps, returning highest priority sections to the off-board operator as permitted by bandwidth availability. It also analyzes hazard maps onboard and can stop the vehicle prior to contacting hazards. It is robust to severe pose errors and uses a novel scan alignment algorithm to compensate for attitude and elevation errors.

Pedersen, Liam↗

NASA NTRS2010

Gigapan Voyage for Robotic Recon

Gigapan Voyage (GV) is a self-contained remotely-operable Gigapan capturing system that is currently being developed by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames Research Center. Gigapan Voyage was primarily designed to be integrated onto Johnson Space Center s Lunar Electric Rovers (LER). While on LER, Gigapan Voyage was used by scientists and astronauts during the 2009 and 2010 Desert RATS field tests. The concept behind Gigapan Voyage is to merge all the sub-components of the commercial GigaPan system into an all-in-one system that can capture, stitch, and display Gigapans in an automated way via a simple web interface. The GV system enables NASA to quickly and easily add remote-controlled Gigapan capturing capability onto rovers with minimal integration effort. Key Words: Geology, NASA, Black Point Lava Flow, Robot, K10, LER, Gigapan Voyage, Desert RATS, Intelligent Robotics Group

Lee, Susan Y.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Robotic Follow-Up for Human Exploration

We are studying how "robotic follow-up" can improve future planetary exploration. Robotic follow-up, which we define as augmenting human field work with subsequent robot activity, is a field exploration technique designed to increase human productivity and science return. To better understand the benefits, requirements, limitations and risks associated with this technique, we are conducting analog field tests with human and robot teams at the Haughton Crater impact structure on Devon Island, Canada. In this paper, we discuss the motivation for robotic follow-up, describe the scientific context and system design for our work, and present results and lessons learned from field testing.

Fong, Terrence↗

NASA NTRS2008

Field Testing of Utility Robots for Lunar Surface Operations

Since 2004, NASA has been working to return to the Moon. In contrast to the Apollo missions, two key objectives of the current exploration program is to establish significant infrastructure and an outpost. Achieving these objectives will enable long-duration stays and long-distance exploration of the Moon. To do this, robotic systems will be needed to perform tasks which cannot, or should not, be performed by crew alone. In this paper, we summarize our work to develop "utility robots" for lunar surface operations, present results and lessons learned from field testing, and discuss directions for future research.

Fong, Terrence↗

NASA NTRS2006

Human-Robot Site Survey and Sampling for Space Exploration

NASA is planning to send humans and robots back to the Moon before 2020. In order for extended missions to be productive, high quality maps of lunar terrain and resources are required. Although orbital images can provide much information, many features (local topography, resources, etc) will have to be characterized directly on the surface. To address this need, we are developing a system to perform site survey and sampling. The system includes multiple robots and humans operating in a variety of team configurations, coordinated via peer-to-peer human-robot interaction. In this paper, we present our system design and describe planned field tests.

Fong, Terrence↗

NASA NTRS2006

Flexible Rover Architecture for Science Instrument Integration and Testing

At NASA Ames Research Center, the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) fields the K9 and K10 class rovers. Both use a mobile robot hardware architecture designed for extensibility and reconfigurability that allows for rapid changes in instrumentation and provides a high degree of modularity. Over the past ssveral years, we have worked with instrument developers at NASA centers, universities, and national laboratories to integrate or partially integrate their instruments onboard the K9 and K10 rovers. Early efforts required considerable interaction to work through integration issues such as power, data protocol and mechanical mounting. These interactions informed the design of our current avionics architecture, and have simplified more recent integration projects. In this paper, we will describe the IRG extensible avionics and software architecture and the effect it has had on our recent instrument integration efforts, including integration of four Mars Instrument Development Program devices.

Bualat, Maria G.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Extensible Hardware Architecture for Mobile Robots

The Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center has developed a new mobile robot hardware architecture designed for extensibility and reconfigurability. Currently implemented on the k9 rover. and won to be integrated onto the K10 series of human-robot collaboration research robots, this architecture allows for rapid changes in instrumentation configuration and provides a high degree of modularity through a synergistic mix of off-the-shelf and custom designed components, allowing eased transplantation into a wide vane6 of mobile robot platforms. A component level overview of this architecture is presented along with a description of the changes required for implementation on K10 , followed by plans for future work.

Park, Eric↗