Behavior control for robotic exploration of planetary surfaces

This paper describes a series of robots developed at JPL to demonstrate the feasibility of using a behavior-control approach to control small robots on planetary surfaces. The round-trip light-time delay makes direct teleoperation of a mobile robot on a planetary surface impossible. Planetary rovers...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on robotics and automation 1994-08, Vol.10 (4), p.490-503
Main Authors: Gat, E., Desai, R., Ivlev, R., Loch, J., Miller, D.P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Automation
Computer science
control theory
systems
Control theory. Systems
Delay
Exact sciences and technology
Instruments
Laboratories
Mars
Mobile robots
Propulsion
Robot control
Robot sensing systems
Robotics
Robots
Space exploration
Space technology
Testing
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Summary:This paper describes a series of robots developed at JPL to demonstrate the feasibility of using a behavior-control approach to control small robots on planetary surfaces. The round-trip light-time delay makes direct teleoperation of a mobile robot on a planetary surface impossible. Planetary rovers must therefore possess a certain degree of autonomy. However, small robots can only support small computers (due mostly to power, not size constraints). Behavior control provides a means of autonomous control that requires very little computation. The robots described in this paper all used 8-bit, 1-MIP microprocessors with as little as 4 k and no more than 40 k of memory, and extremely simple sensors. Despite these limitations they reliably perform both autonomous navigation and manipulation in both indoor and outdoor rough-terrain environments.< >
ISSN:1042-296X
2374-958X
DOI:10.1109/70.313099