NASA’s Perseverance rover has been trundling throughout the floor of Mars since arriving on the planet in spectacular style in February final 12 months.
The six-wheeled, SUV-sized automobile is presently on its technique to the Jezero River Delta because it continues its seek for proof of historical microbial life on the pink planet.
In a brand new video, Tyler Del Sesto, a rover driver and strategic route planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains how Perseverance is utilizing its self-driving smarts to maneuver safely throughout the martian floor.
With a high velocity of 0.1 mph, Perseverance is transferring at about the identical tempo as a tortoise (a gradual one, at that!), protecting round 300 yards a day.
When NASA’s rover is making its method throughout lengthy distances between areas of curiosity, as it’s doing now, the crew at JPL want solely plot a number of factors for its primary route, leaving the remainder to the rover’s “AutoNav” autonomous navigation system.
“The rover’s self-driving potential is similar to self-driving automobiles on Earth, however there are completely different challenges,” Del Sesto says. So whereas autonomous automobiles on Earth use a collection of sensors and cameras to look out for different automobiles, cyclists, and pedestrians, Perseverance is utilizing comparable know-how to keep away from rocks, sand, craters and cliffs with a view to keep protected.
The rover drivers at JPL are capable of entry 3D maps — constructed from pictures snapped by Perseverance’s left and proper cameras — to see how nicely the rover is performing throughout its drives on the faraway planet. One massive benefit over earlier NASA rovers equivalent to Curiosity is that Perseverance is ready to course of and analyze captured pictures whereas driving, enabling it to finish journeys extra rapidly that its predecessor, which must cease, take pictures, after which course of them earlier than selecting a protected route. NASA calls Perseverance’s system a “thinking-while-driving functionality.”
For extra sophisticated routes or driving maneuvers, the rover crew at JPL will don 3D glasses and look at the close by terrain extra intently because the rover advances.
“Perseverance’s self-driving potential is essential to this mission,” Del Sesto says. “It permits us to get to the Jezero Rover Delta as quick as potential and that provides the science crew as a lot time there to check the rocks and gather samples for future return to Earth.”
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