David Wettergreen
CMU Robotics Institute
Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)
Refreshments 3:15 pm
Talk 3:30 pm
Astrobiology is the study of the living universe and it addresses the
realization that the origin and evolution of life itself cannot be
understood unless it is examined in all the environments in which life
might exist, including those beyond our own planet.
The Chilean Atacama Desert is the most arid region on Earth and in several
ways the most analogous to Mars. Evidence suggests that the interior of
the Atacama is lifeless, yet where the desert meets the Pacific coastal
range desiccation-tolerant micro-organisms are known to exist. The
gradient of biodiversity and habitats in the Atacama's subregions remain
unexplored and are the focus of the Life in the Atacama project.
Our field investigation is bringing new scientific understanding of the
Atacama as a habitat for life through the creation of robotic
astrobiology. This involves capabilities for autonomously traversing
hundreds of kilometers while deploying sensors to survey the varying
geologic and biologic properties of the environment. Our goal is to make
genuine discoveries about the limits of life on Earth and to generate
knowledge about life in extreme environments that can be applied to future
planetary missions.
In this talk I will motivate the Life in the Atacama project from both
astrobiologic and robotic perspectives. I will focus on some of the
research challenges we are facing to enable endurance navigation, resource
cognizance, and long-term survivability. Our project conducted first
scientific investigation and technical experiments in Chile in April 2003
with the mobile robot Hyperion. I will describe the experiments and the
results of our analysis. These results give us insight into the design of
an effective robotic astrobiologist and into the methods by which we will
conduct scientific investigation in the coming years.
Dr. David Wettergreen is a Research Scientist at the Robotics Institute
and is leading the Life in the Atacama investigation. The focus of Dr.
Wettergreen's research is robotic exploration. For more than a decade,
through research with robots including Ambler, Dante, Marsokhod, Nomad,
and Kambara, he has worked toward increasing complexity, robustness and
autonomy in robotic explorers. His work spans concept formulation through
to field experimentation and advances the necessary ingredients of
perception, planning, learning, execution and control. He has proven
concepts and tested technologies in relevant environments around the
globe. Dr. Wettergreen's most recent work in robotic exploration involves
the creation of Hyperion, a solar-powered rover used to demonstrate
sun-synchronous navigation in the Canadian high arctic and in initial
experiments in astrobiology in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Dr.
Wettergreen was a Research Fellow at the Australian National University
from 1998-2000 and an NRC Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Center
from 1996-97. He received his Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon in
1995.
TBD
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.
