Robotic Platform for Testing Operations Tools

Poster Image
Event poster; details follow in description
Poster Session
B
Poster Number
02
Project Author(s)
Meira Griffel
Institution
Oregon State University | NASA Internship - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Project Description

This project worked on adapting the Scarecrow mobility testbed rover to test current and past software tools. Calibrating and testing Scarecrow’s visual sensing has been an important starting point, as the Robot Sequencing and Visualization Program (RSVP) is highly dependent on visual information from the rover. RSVP is an established and successful mode of visualizing the driving paths of Mars Rovers. Adaptation for newer rovers that will be going to the Moon will be important for their success. RSVP has been proven to be very successful when used on Mars Rovers, and adapting it for lunar rovers will allow them to have a baseline of similar abilities as Mars rovers in terms of mobility. RSVP makes rover driving easier because it decreases the amount of time it takes for a sequence of movements for the rover to be planned. This project also included work on improving future lunar mission Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) rover and lander, and Mars 2020 Rover models for visualization software. This facilitates human-robot interaction for robotic control systems. For Mars 2020, this project included modifying models to more accurately represent the rover that is currently on Mars. For CADRE, this project included optimizing the resolution of the models to an appropriate level for the rendering engine, adding colors and textures to more easily differentiate between mechanisms, and separating parts of the models and animating them to show actuation during the egress sequence.