Tele-Operated Lunar Rover Navigation Using Lidar

NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USAABSTRACTNear real-time tele-operated driving on the lunar surfaceremains constrained by bandwidth and signal latency de-spite the Moon’s relative proximity.As part of our work within NASA’s Human-Robotic Sys-tems Project (HRS), we have developed a stand-alonemodularLIDARbasedsafeguardedtele-operationsystemof hardware, middleware, navigation software and userinterface. Thesystemhasbeeninstalledandtestedontwodistinct NASA rovers–JSC’s Centaur2 lunar rover pro-totype and ARC’s KRex research rover–and tested overseveralkilometersoftele-operateddrivingataveragesus-tained speeds of 0.15 - 0.25 m/s around rocks, slopes andsimulated lunar craters using a deliberately constrainedtelemetry link.The navigation system builds onboard terrain and hazardmaps, returning highest priority sections to the off-boardoperator as permitted by bandwidth availability. It alsoanalyzes hazard maps onboard and can stop the vehicleprior to contacting hazards. It is robust to severe poseerrors and uses a novel scan alignment algorithm to com-pensate for attitude and elevation errors.Key words: navigation; lunar tele-operation, Centaur2,hazard detection, RAPID, NASA telemetry standard,point cloud alignment, LIDAR, roughness estimation.Figure 1: The Centaur2 rover at NASA JSC’s Rockyardtest site. Note the modular navigation mast installed onthe rightFigure 2: NASA ARC’s KRex research rover