posted on 1995-01-01, 00:00authored byReid Simmons, Eric Krotkov, Lonnie Chrisman, Fabio Cozman, Richard Goodwin, Martial Hebert, Lalitesh Katragadda, Sven Koenig, Gita Krishnaswamy, Yoshikazu Shinoda, William Whittaker, Paul Klarer
Reliable navigation is critical for a lunar rover, both for
autonomous traverses and safeguarded, remote
teleoperation. This paper describes an implemented system
that has autonomously driven a prototype wheeled lunar
rover over a kilometer in natural, outdoor terrain. The
navigation system uses stereo terrain maps to perform
local obstacle avoidance, and arbitrates steering
recommendations from both the user and the rover. The
paper describes the system architecture, each of the major
components, and the experimental results to date.