Robotic Recon

Phew! What a great two weeks it has been! I am absolutely thrilled by how much we accomplished during this field test. Not only did we collect a tremendous amount of ground recon data, which I'm sure will greatly improve planning and operations for the upcoming Lunar Electric Rover mission, but we also gained many significant insights into robotic recon and learned many valuable lessons about analog testing at Black Point Lava Flow. I'm looking forward to the many papers and reports that will come in the following weeks...

After two weeks of K10 field operations, we have finished collecting robotic recon data at Black Point Lava Flow. One thing that we have learned during this test is that Google Earth is a wonderful tool for visualizing robot operations and data.

After operating for more than 60 hours over the past two weeks, K10 completed its last "robotic recon" traverse today. The last traverse (plan number 64D) was a 800 m westward drive through brush covered terrain with eight microscopic terrain image captures and three GigaPan panoramas. Just as K10 reached the end of this drive, a fierce wind, dust and lightning storm suddenly appeared. The field team barely had time to cover K10 before having to run and seek shelter, leaving K10 to brave the storm by itself! I guess this was Mother Nature's way of giving K10 a big send-off...

During the past few days, Liam Pedersen has been working to automatically transform the data captured by K10's lidar into elevation maps and traversability maps (which indicate areas where K10 can, and cannot, traverse). This image shows a colored elevation map overlaid on Google Earth. The elevation map was generated from two successive lidar scans, each of which has a 40x40 degree field of view. The map makes it much easier to understand the slope of the lava flow.

The field team has been working tirelessly the past two weeks: driving early each morning to Black Point Lava Flow from Flagstaff, working long hours, and getting back late every evening. They done a superb job keeping K10 running, even in strong winds, in rain, in heat, and in dust storms. And, they've remained motivated, determined, and full of good spirit throughout the entire time.

My name is Tim Kennedy and I work in the Mission Operations Directorate at the NASA Johnson Space Center. During the past ten days, I have been the Flight Director for the K10 flight control team.

While K10 drives in the bright sunshine at Black Point Lava Flow, the flight control team sits in a darkened room that is illuminated by rows of monitors. Known by their call signs - DATA, ROC, DRIVER and SPOC - they are the ones who keep K10 on track to execute the daily missions.

Yesterday (June 24), we sent K10 to scout an area that did not have network communications coverage. To scout this area, we again made use of "Mars Mode" and asked the field team to run robot plans in the field and then send all the data acquired back to NASA Ames at the end of the day. The goal for June 24 was to go to at least one of the stations (CP1 to CP9) shown on the image in order to acquire a 360 GigaPan panorama, a single terrain image, and lidar scans.

Hi, I am a Carnegie Mellon student observing the field test operations as apart of a Masters of Human-Computer Interaction capstone project. I am on a team with four other students and we are studying the process that scientists go through to create plans for the rover and analyze data. Using our observations as inspiration, we will design a piece of software that can help support the planning process for future field tests.

My name is R. Aileen Yingst, and I serve on the North traverse Science Team for the K10 field experiment. I've been a Participating Scientist on the Mars Exploration Rovers mission for 4 years now, and this experience with a "lunar" mission has been a real eye-opener.