Towards integrated rover designs optimized for navigation

Autonomous mobile robots which are designed to operate in unknown environments, such as Mars or the Moon surface must be robust to unpredictable challenges and capable of making correct decisions to survive. One of the important tasks of rovers is to locate themselves in an environment where no navigation aids such as GPS is available. This is necessary for planning their journey to explore as many scientifically interesting sites as possible. Despite significant computational developments, due to lack of adequate sensor data localization has remained a challenging area among the robotic community. We propose to investigate the possibility of adding new sensing techniques which may help to provide a more accurate estimation of the rover location. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Jozsef Kovecses

Student:

Bahareh Ghotbi

Partner:

MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Aerospace and defense

University:

Program: