FASTER

Forward Acquisition of Soil and Terrain for Exploration Rover

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The goal of the FASTER project is to address three key technology developments for planetary exploration: forward looking surface properties characterisation, innovative locomotion system for a scout type rover, and collaborative operation of a mother/scout pair. 1.) The project will develop methods and instrumentation to characterise the properties of planetary surfaces in which robotic rover vehicles operate to be able to anticipate hazards in advance of locomotion and navigation over that surface. By assessing the soil trafficability for a rover, decisions affecting rover safety (avoiding becoming stuck) can be reliably taken and hazards avoided. 2.) The project will look at what innovation can be applied to ensure that the scout rover is able to operate with minimal risk of encountering hazardous situations from which it must recover. 3.) FASTER will explore the feasibility and performance of a mother/scout rover pair combination and develop methods to achieve successful collaborative and autonomous robot operation. The forward looking scout rover will be equipped with a special combination of sensor technologies to acquire soil and terrain information. This information will allow a risk model to be constructed that indicates the potential hazards that the terrain represents to the following mother rover. Reducing the locomotion and traverse risks using the proposed advances in autonomous mother / scout collaboration will allow mission operators to explore planetary surfaces with increased safety. It will make possible new levels of autonomous operations by significantly reducing the greatest uncertainty factor – namely properties of the surface material on which the rover must operate. This will lead to increased operational efficiency and, when coupled with the increased richness of the surface properties data, will lead to much higher scientific returns per capital investment for each mission.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Space rovers currently travel very slowly over uncharted terrain to avoid getting stuck or damaged. Novel soil-sensing technology and the possibility of a rover team should enhance risk assessment for faster data collection.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Planetary exploration with unmanned vehicles is tricky business. Since the nature of these missions is exploratory, rovers travel into uncharted territory guided by remote sensing instrumentation. In order to avoid getting stuck in soft sand or damage due to collisions with other obstacles, rovers move very slowly covering only a few metres per day.

Such velocities are quite prohibitive in terms of making the most of data collection on expensive missions to explore vast planetary objects. The EU-funded project 'Forward acquisition of soil and terrain for exploration rover' (FASTER) is seeking to increase rover velocities by improving hazard anticipation through advanced soil-sensing technology, controlling software and paired rover cooperation.

The first project period was devoted to establishing the specifications for all aspects of the project. These included the systems concept, the mission scenarios, and the protocol for system validation and testing. All these have been finalised. In addition, the team has begun developing designs for the soil-sensing system and the scout rover testbed. A major component of the project is assessing the feasibility and performance of a collaborative mother/scout rover pair in which the scout assesses soil trafficability and the mother follows. Design concepts for the pair are currently under development.

FASTER expects to significantly enhance the scientific payoff of capital investments for planetary exploration missions by increasing the speed at which rovers cover the terrain. Advanced instrumentation to analyse the surface and avoid hazards as well as a novel rover team concept where the first analyses and the second traverses for data collection should improve the safety and reliability of future planetary exploration missions. Space and defence funding often have additional benefits and FASTER is no exception. Technology for safely traversing unknown terrain in harsh environments will be highly desirable for emergency management tasks and undersea exploration as well.