An Evaluation Methodology for Autonomous Mobile Robots for Planetary Exploration

摘要

We report here on a new technique to evaluate autonomous mobile robots built for exploring rugged terrain such as is found on planetary surfaces. The dynamics of both wheeled and legged robots interacting with deformable soil (sand) and obstacles are notoriously complex and nonlinear. This paper introduces a novel statistical methodology for the evaluation of such robots. We report on work in progress using a wheeled and a legged robot as examples. We have performed experiments in simulation. Predictions from these are reported. We have built two robots and a testbed which simulates Martian terrain for testing these predictions. 1 Introduction Robots are complex systems, whose interaction with the environment is hard to model accurately. The question of whether one has the appropriate robot for a given mission is often asked but seldom answered. Given two robot designs a comparison between the two is difficult because of the many (often incommensurate) dimensions along which performan...