Science crew operations and utility testbed

Abstract

Purpose

The goal of this research has been to design and field test a multi‐use planetary rover vehicle. SCOUT has been developed to test advanced rover hardware and software technologies and to enable the development and demonstration of mission operations concepts applicable to future planetary rover vehicle development activities.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a description of the SCOUT vehicle capabilities and the results of the remote field testing conducted recently in Meteor Crater, AZ. These tests included (among others) onboard driving by suited crewmembers, remote teleoperation, autonomous point‐to‐point navigation, obstacle avoidance, human tracking and following, gesture recognition and onboard suit‐recharge.

Findings

SCOUT was successfully tested in all three driving modes (onboard by two suited crewmembers, teleoperation and autonomous) and additional capabilities verified over the course of the testing period.

Research limitations/impilications

Various tests experienced periodic telemetry drop‐outs to the vehicle. Future research should improve upon the communications architecture to minimize the loading on system bandwidth.

Practical implications

A multi‐use planetary rover will prove very useful on future Lunar and Martian exploration missions on an assortment of activities. In addition to equipment transport, riding on the rover will allow crewmembers to cover more surface area while conserving important extravehicular activity suit consumables.

Originality/value

Several new concepts for rover technologies are presented here including on‐board suit recharge, stereo‐vision human tracking and following, gesture recognition and autonomous driving and navigation.

Citation

Rochlis, J., Delgado, F. and Graham, J. (2006), "Science crew operations and utility testbed", Industrial Robot, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 443-450. https://doi.org/10.1108/01439910610705617