Year End Report: Autonomous Planetary Rover at Carnegie Mellon, 1989

Abstract : The Carnegie Mellon University program to develop an Earth-based prototype of an autonomous planetary rover is organized around three teams that are developing the locomotion, perception, and planning subsystems. A joint task is to integrate the three subsystems into an experimental robot system. We will use this system for evaluating, demonstrating, and validating the concepts and technologies developed in the program. The technical objectives of the research include the following: (1) To develop and demonstrate an autonomous Earth-based mobile robot that can survive, explore, and sample in rugged, natural terrains analogous to those of Mars; (2) To provide detailed, local representations and broad, 3-D descriptions of rugged, unknown terrain by exploiting diverse sensors and data sources; and (3) To demonstrate robot autonomy through a planning and task control architecture that incorporates robot goals, intentions, actions, exceptions, and safeguards. (KR)