ROBOT ACTIONS PLANNING AND EXECUTION CONTROL FOR AUTONOMOUS EXPLORATION ROVERS

Abstract

To achieve the ever increasing demand for science returns, extraterrestrial exploration rovers require more autonomy to successfully perform their missions. Indeed, the communication delays are such that teleoperation is unrealistic. Although the current rovers (such as MER) demonstrate a limited navigation autonomy, and mostly rely on ground mission planning, the next generation (e.g. NASA Mars Science Laboratory and ESA Exomars) aims at “beyond the field of view ” autonomous navigation. Other exploration missions which cannot rely on human teleprogramming, will even require activity planning, repair and replanning to be made onboard. In this paper, we propose and give experimental results of an original approach for temporal planning and execution control, including plan repair and replanning, fully integrated onboard a robot performing rover exploration like missions. Our claim is twofold. First these planning/plan repair methods and techniques are now mature enough to be considered to solve real world problems. Second they can be integrated in existing architectures and used onboard a fully operational robot, with currently available hardware.