Balloon based planetary aerobots can be used for a variety of applications such as high resolution imaging, sample site selection, data relay, rover guidance and atmospheric measurements. However short to medium term missions of this type will be constrained in terms of power, communications, data storage and processing capability. To be of use, they must be able to localise and manage image data in an autonomous manner, including intelligent prioritisation of images. This paper discusses the development of an intelligent imaging and localisation software package and demonstrator which will help to provide such an autonomous capability. From the outset of the project it was developed to be as mission realistic as possible, primarily doing all processing (image, DEM, communication, control etc) on-board. Although this may have limited resources (data storage, power) it does reduce the communication bandwidths required for image transfer, producing a complete compact system. The final ILP system and the test environment showed that an image based aerobot system would be capable of gathering images, localising and data handling under real world environments. Perhaps a unique aspect of this work was the autonomous determination of science or image richness. In general terms this is a widely applicable concept. It is potentially directly relevant to the current ExoMars mission where large volumes of image data may have to be compressed or prioritised based on an on-board determination of science or planning quality. We have developed an Imaging and Localisation Package and hardware/software demonstrator for a Martian balloon. An overview of our proposed system has been presented. For localisation we have proposed a novel combination of image based relative and global localisation techniques. We propose to demonstrate our ILP using both real and simulated aerobot and thereby provide a comprehensive test and evaluation of the ILP functionality. It is hoped that this work will contribute to definition of a feasible robotic balloon mission to Mars within the current decade.
An autonomous imaging and localisation capability for planetary aerobots
2008
8 Seiten, 14 Bilder, 8 Quellen
Conference paper
Storage medium
English
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