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Robotics Institute
Seminar, September 10
Time
and Place | Seminar Abstract | Speaker
Biography | Speaker Appointments
The Mars Exploration Rovers: Driving
Autonomously on Mars
California Institute of Technology
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Time and Place |
Mauldin Auditorium (NSH 1305)
Refreshments 3:15 pm
Talk 3:30 pm
NASA
successfully landed two mobile robot geologists on the surface of Mars in
January 2004: the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers. Their primary goal was to find evidence of
past water at Gusev Crater and Meridiani
Planum, two geologically distinct sites on opposite
sides of the planet. Although the
achievement of their successful landings stands out as a technological tour de
force, it was their ability to navigate while on the surface of Mars that
enabled both rovers to succeed in their primary goals.
Driving
was done either in a very directed way (following a
path chosen by human Rover Drivers), or in an autonomous mode where the rover
was allowed to decide for itself whether and where to drive. This autonomous
navigation capability enabled the vehicles to drive safely even through areas
never before seen on Earth: more than 1500 meters of the
rovers' combined distance was driven autonomously.
This
mission has demonstrated groundbreaking use of several key NASA-sponsored
Robotics technologies. The MER rovers
are the first spacecraft to use passive stereo vision processing for hazard
detection, dense traversability analysis for onboard
terrain assessment and safe path selection, and feature-tracking Visual Odometry for position estimation. Each MER vehicle has also driven farther in
one day than Sojourner did during its three month lifetime.
Come
see pictures from Mars, learn about the surface autonomy software, and hear
hints of what's in store for future Mars missions.
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Speaker Biography |
Dr. Mark Maimone is a
Machine Vision researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division
of the California Institute of Technology.
He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at CMU in 1996, and was then a
Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Robotics Institute, supervising the
1996 Lunar Rover field trials and serving as Navigation and Software Lead for
the 1997 Atacama Desert Trek.
Mark has worked at JPL since 1997, initially on the
Long Range Science Rover, Planetary Dexterous Manipulator, and Pioneer Vision
System for Chornobyl Inspection projects, delivering
3D vision systems for autonomous robotic operations and mapping. A member of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER)
Flight Software team since 2000, he designed and implemented the Autonomous
Surface Navigation capabilities on the MER vehicles. Mark is now part of the MER Operations team,
planning and reviewing Mars Rover activities daily.
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Speaker Appointments |
For appointments, please contact Martial Hebert
The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.