Autonomous navigation of planetary rovers

Abstract

Autonomous Navigation of Planetary Rovers deepens the field of autonomously-driven robotic systems and its application to planetary rovers. Based on the experience of previous successful Mars missions such as the Mars Exploration Rovers or Curiosity, it focuses on the challenges that future European missions such as ExoMars or the Sample Fetch Rover shall face. It explores the state-of-the-art in different functions that together compose the capability of Autonomous Navigation. Solutions for localisation, perception, SLAM, path planning and trajectory control are studied, and novel designs and implementations of these are proposed. Altogether, an architecture of the complete Guidance, Navigation and Control subsystem of a rover is designed, and its implementation tested to demonstrate the enhancements that it can bring to future rover missions.