Gigapan Voyage for Robotic Reconnaissance

Gigapan Voyage is a self-contained remotely-operable Gigapan capturing system that is being developed by the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center. Gigapan Voyage was primarily designed to be integrated onto Johnson Space Center’s Lunar Electric Rovers. While on the Lunar Electric Rover, Gigapan Voyage was used by scientists and astronauts during the 2009 and 2010 Desert RATS field tests. The overall objective of this “robotic reconnaissance experiment” was to improve NASA’s understanding of how pre-cursor robotic scouting could enhance planning capabilities and increase science return from human exploration missions.

The motivation behind Gigapan Voyage is to merge all the sub-components of the commercial GigaPan system into an all-in-one system that can capture, stitch, and display Gigapans in an automated way via a simple web interface. The Gigapan Voyage system enables NASA to quickly and easily add remote-controlled Gigapan capturing capability onto rovers with minimal integration effort.