An integrated autonomous navigation and decision-making architecture for planetary exploration rovers

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing research into and experience with autonomy and automation of space missions, such as Earth observation, space station operations, planetary robotic exploration and deep space probes. Capabilities of such systems have grown exponentially, leading to the need of the development of autonomy for the space and ground systems, driven by the benefits that autonomy brings in terms of reducing mission operational costs, enabling long term missions and maximizing scientific return. In the area of planetary rovers the robotics autonomy must be achieved by implementing autonomous navigation capabilities in the functional layer and autonomous decision-making systems in the deliberative layer. In this paper, we propose a goal-oriented autonomous controller architecture over a functional layer based in the classical GNC (guidance-navigation-control) approach. The structure of this paper is the following: Section 1 provides an overview of autonomous system architectures; Section 2 describes the proposed architecture, as well as a description of the deliberative and reactive layer; Section 3 describes the functional layer of the proposed architecture, by providing details regarding the proposed GNC functions of the planetary rover; Finally, conclusions are drawn and the proposed next steps are detailed.