Roadbots
Although charting the planetary roadmaps is not frontier tech, launching a fleet of rovers to lay down a network of roads on the Moon and Mars isn’t currently practical. The issue is the speed of the autonomous rovers, which are quite slow due to the need to communicate with Earth. GMV is one of the first companies to explore the issue of rapid rovers, via the European Space Agency’s GSTP program.
“Multinational tech company GMV has successfully completed the FASTNAV (Multi-range Navigation for Fast Moon Rovers) project. This initiative focused on developing, maturing, and demonstrating a navigation solution for rovers capable of achieving speeds of 1 m/s, a feat previously unattainable by an autonomous rover on the surface of a distant planet. Led by GMV, the project is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) under the General Support Technology Program (GSTP) and supported by the UK Space Agency (UKSA).”
Charting maps of the First Roads in Space is an enabling technology for eventually leaving behind a network of rover tracks on the Moon and Mars. Our maps are the first of their kind, and the planetary address framework is groundbreaking in its use of quadrangles and planetary roads to identify point locations on the Moon and Mars. As we gain momentum in our mapmaking endeavors, we hope to see the Eskey System adopted as the global standard for planetary addresses. The next space race may literally be that: a race along the surface of the Moon.
NASA highlights "firsts" because they mark significant scientific breakthroughs, technological advancements, and pioneering human achievements, inspiring the public, establishing new standards, and building on foundational steps that drive future exploration, from the first US satellite to the first "first light" of new instruments, showing progress and inspiring STEM. These milestones demonstrate the "impossible" becoming possible, fulfilling NASA's core mission to innovate and inspire humanity through discovery.
“With renewed interest in lunar exploration, preparing future technologies to support new vehicles (rovers), landing modules, and human missions returning to the Moon has become a top priority for the space industry. In this context, fast lunar rovers capable of traveling long distances (20 km+) in a single lunar day (approximately 14 Earth days) are seen as the next big step. These rovers must be equipped with sophisticated onboard navigation systems that enable them to detect and avoid obstacles while traversing the challenging terrain.”
This is from a Q & A at ISDC 2024 that discusses how to mark lunar roads with bi-directional arrows. In a later question, the audience asked about the possibility of using mile markers to distinguish transitions from one quadrangle to the next.
Reference:
RAPID: A Robust and (Semi) Autonomous Platform for Increased Distances
J. Ocón 1, R. Jalvo 1, M. Esquer 1, A. Gómez Eguíluz 1, M. Alonso 1, J. Ramos 1, V. Papantoniou 2, S. Skevakis 2, S. Makris 2, A. Pap 2, C. Pérez del Pulgar 3, L. Mantoani 3, K. Kapellos 4
1 GMV Aerospace and Defense
2 Hellenic Technology of Robotics
3 University of Malaga
4 Network Research Belgium
The Moon is the next step in human exploration. Water, other volatiles, and lunar materials such as regolith, metals, or rare-earth elements are potential resources that can support the sustainable human and robotic exploration of the Moon and the Solar System beyond. Previous Mars and Moon rover missions have highlighted a limitation in mobility, with surface rovers traversing only a few tens of meters per day, except for the manned Apollo rovers. This limitation can be primarily attributed to the rover locomotion system and its power storage capabilities from one side, and the other by the lack/reduced skills in terms of autonomous capability to take decisions on-board. To address this issue, RAPID, an ESA project led by GMV, aims at developing a semi-autonomous rover capable of safely traversing lunar areas at high speeds (1 m/s or 2 mph) using a visual navigation-based Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) system and passive suspension targeted for high-speed mobility. This paper discusses the development of this autonomous rover, its different subsystems and the results obtained during the field tests.
October 2023 Conference: 17th Symposium on Advanced Space Technologies in Robotics and Automation (ASTRA 2023) At: Scheltema, Leiden, Netherlands
