Increased Flexibility and Robustness of Mars Rovers

Abstract

file - 59.pdf, Citations 7,Abstract: Our overall objective is to improve the productivityofMars rovers by increasing the flexibility and robustness of theirautonomous behavior. To achieve this objective, we set out toincrease the on-board autonomy of rovers and enable commanding at ahigher level with a more flexible command language. In February,1999, we demonstrated some of our rover autonomy technologies aspart of a Marsokhod rover field test that simulated aspects of theMars '01#'05 missions. In this paper, we present the commandinglanguage employed in this field test, called the Contingent RoverLanguage (CRL), and describe the ground tools and on-board executivecapabilities that were developed to generate and execute CRL plans.A key feature of CRL is that it enables the encoding of contingentplans specifying what to do if a failure occurs, as well as what todo if a\tserendipitous science opportunity arises.