Mobile robotic surveying performance for planetary surface site characterization

Robotic systems will perform mobile surveys for scientific and engineering purposes as part of future missions on lunar and planetary surfaces. With site characterization as a task objective various system configurations and surveying techniques are possible. This paper describes several examples of mobile surveying approaches using local and remote sensing configurations. A geometric measure of are a coverage performance is applied to each and relative performance in surveying a common area is characterized by expected performance trends. Performance metrics that solely express geometric aspects of the task are limited in utility as decision aids to mission operators. As such, the importance of enriching such metrics by incorporating additional attributes germane to surveying on planetary surfaces is highlighted.

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