| Path Following With Slip Compensation for a Mars Rover |
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| NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory | |
| Aug 31 2005 | |
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advertisement: A software system for autonomous operation of a Mars rover is composed of several key algorithms that enable the rover to accurately follow a designated path, compensate for slippage of its wheels on terrain, and reach intended goals. The techniques implemented by the algorithms are visual odometry, full vehicle kinematics, a Kalman filter, and path following with slip compensation.
The visual-odometry algorithm tracks distinctive scene features in stereo imagery to estimate rover motion between successively acquired stereo image pairs, by use of a maximum-likelihood motion-estimation algorithm. The full-vehicle kinematics algorithm estimates motion, with a no-slip assumption, from measured wheel rates, steering angles, and angles of rockers and bogies in the rover suspension system. The Kalman filter merges data from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and the visual-odometry algorithm. The merged estimate is then compared to the kinematic estimate to determine whether and how much slippage has occurred. The kinematic estimate is used to complement the Kalman-filter estimate if no statistically significant slippage has occurred. If slippage has occurred, then a slip vector is calculated by subtracting the current Kalman filter estimate from the kinematic estimate. This slip vector is then used, in conjunction with the inverse kinematics, to determine the wheel velocities and steering angles needed to compensate for slip and follow the desired path. This work was done by Daniel Helmick, Yang Cheng, Daniel Clouse, Larry Matthies, and Stergios Roumeliotis of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For further information, access the Technical Support Package (TSP) free on-line at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Software category. This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Karina Edmonds of the California Institute of Technology at (818) 393-2827. Refer to NPO-40703. This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).
Path Following With Slip Compensation for a Mars Rover (reference NPO-40703) is currently available for download from the TSP library. Login first to download.
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