posted on 1999-01-01, 00:00authored byKimberly Shillcutt, Dimitrios Apostolopoulos, William Whittaker
The goal of the Robotic Antarctic Meteorite Search is to enable discovery of meteorites in Antarctica by
a mobile robot. The extreme environment makes it one of the best places to find meteorites, but one of
the worst places for humans to work. The meteorite-finding robot will traverse an ice field in a pattern
designed to cover the area completely, stopping to investigate potential meteorites with an array of sensors.
High level autonomy is needed for this project in many areas: scientific sensing, scientific analysis,
navigational sensing, navigational planning, and mission planning. Navigational planning for this project
primarily involves generating coverage patterns for traversing the ice fields as completely as possible.
Multiple types of patterns are considered, and some of their benefits and problems are discussed. Several
of the coverage patterns have been tested in a gravel slag heap in Pittsburgh and on the ice in Antarctica,
and the results of these tests are described. The affect of different environments and robot locomotion
configurations on control issues, such as the implementation of the pure pursuit algorithm, and maintaining
and regaining a path, are discussed.