Graphics enhanced version of this site

Terrain Aware Inversion of Predictive Models for Planetary Rovers
A. Kelly and T. Howard
Proceedings of the Nasa Science and Technology Conference, June, 2007.

Jump to: Download | Abstract | Notes | Text Reference | BibTeX Reference

Adobe portable document format (pdf) [587 KB]

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Planetary rovers will continue to evolve in the direction of enhanced mobility and more challenging terrain. Once the mechatronics are in place, it becomes the job of software to exploit the mobility of the platform to the maximum degree possible while minimizing exposure to risks. Local motion planners for outdoor offroad terrain typically use relatively high fidelity models of vehicle motion to correctly predict the consequences of candidate actions. More correct predictions leads to more intelligent behavior, more effective science, and reduced mobility risk. Our formulation is based on an efficient inversion of the equations of motion to compute the precise controls necessary to achieve a desired position and orientation while following the contours of the terrain under arbitrary wheel terrain interactions. All higher level rover behaviors can benefit from such precision, terrain aware controls. Applications to instrument placement, wheel slip compensation, obstacle avoidance, and regional mobility planning will be presented.

Associated center: NREC
Associated project: Very Rough Terrain Nonholonomic Trajectory Generation and Motion Planning for Rovers

Number of pages: 5

A. Kelly and T. Howard, "Terrain Aware Inversion of Predictive Models for Planetary Rovers," Proceedings of the Nasa Science and Technology Conference, June, 2007.

@inproceedings{Kelly_2007_5917,
   author = "Alonzo Kelly and Thomas Howard",
   title = "Terrain Aware Inversion of Predictive Models for Planetary Rovers",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the Nasa Science and Technology Conference",
   month = "June",
   year = "2007"
}