Lidar Sensors for Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance

Amzajerdian, Farzin; Petway, Larry B.; Hines, Glenn D.; Roback, Vincent E.; Reisse, Robert A.; Pierrottet, Diego F.

doi:10.2514/6.2013-5312

Cited by 34 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…[2][3][4]. The HDS navigation system is bootstrapped to the 50 Hz navigation state provided by the host vehicle, except during gimbal mosaics where bootstrapping is suspended to ensure a smooth pose estimate without discontinuities due to filter updates.…”

Section: Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 The ALHAT sensor suite consists of a flash LIDAR-based Hazard Detection System (HDS), 2 a Doppler LIDAR velocimeter, 3 and a long-range Laser Altimeter. 4 The HDS was developed as a stand-alone, bolt-on system to detect available safe landing sites within a 100 m × 100 m region of the Lunar surface from 1 km slant range, 500 m altitude, in real-time and under any surface lighting conditions, and to subsequently provide hazard-relative position measurements to the Host Vehicle (HV)'s GN&C subsystem to improve landing accuracy. 5,6 The current generation HDS system was fully integrated with the Morpheus avionics and tested during a helicopter flight test campaign (Field Test #5) at the simulated lunar hazard field at KSC in December 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flight testing a Real-Time Hazard Detection System for Safe Lunar Landing on the Rocket-Powered Morpheus Vehicle

Trawny

Huertas

Luna

et al. 2015

AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference

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The Hazard Detection System (HDS) is a component of the ALHAT (Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology) sensor suite, which together provide a lander Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) system with the relevant measurements necessary to enable safe precision landing under any lighting conditions. The HDS consists of a stand-alone compute element (CE), an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and a gimbaled flash LIDAR sensor that are used, in real-time, to generate a Digital Elevation Map (DEM) of the landing terrain, detect candidate safe landing sites for the vehicle through Hazard Detection (HD), and generate hazard-relative navigation (HRN) measurements used for safe precision landing. Following an extensive ground and helicopter test campaign, ALHAT was integrated onto the Morpheus rocket-powered terrestrial test vehicle in March 2014. Morpheus and ALHAT then performed five successful free flights at the simulated lunar hazard field constructed at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center, for the first time testing the full system on a lunar-like approach geometry in a relevant dynamic environment. During these flights, the HDS successfully generated DEMs, correctly identified safe landing sites and provided HRN measurements to the vehicle, marking the first autonomous landing of a NASA rocket-powered vehicle in hazardous terrain. This paper provides a brief overview of the HDS architecture and describes its in-flight performance.

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Section: Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flight testing a Real-Time Hazard Detection System for Safe Lunar Landing on the Rocket-Powered Morpheus Vehicle

Trawny

Huertas

Luna

et al. 2015

AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference

Self Cite

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“…The capabilities of the flash lidar along with the other two lidar sensors 10 12 and Autonomous Navigation System 13 . HDS uses the flash lidar images to generate a digital elevation map of the landing area and to subsequently select the best landing location given the vehicle's constraints and the mission objectives.…”

Section: Alhat Demonstration Flight Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaging flash LIDAR for safe landing on solar system bodies and spacecraft rendezvous and docking

et al. 2015

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NASA has been pursuing flash lidar technology for autonomous, safe landing on solar system bodies and for automated rendezvous and docking. During the final stages of the landing from about 1 km to 500 m above the ground, the flash lidar can generate 3-Dimensional images of the terrain to identify hazardous features such as craters, rocks, and steep slopes. The onboard flight computer can then use the 3-D map of terrain to guide the vehicle to a safe location. As an automated rendezvous and docking sensor, the flash lidar can provide relative range, velocity, and bearing from an approaching spacecraft to another spacecraft or a space station. NASA Langley Research Center has developed and demonstrated a flash lidar sensor system capable of generating 16k pixels range images with 7 cm precision, at 20 Hz frame rate, from a maximum slant range of 1800 m from the target area. This paper describes the lidar instrument and presents the results of recent flight tests onboard a rocket-propelled free-flyer vehicle (Morpheus) built by NASA Johnson Space Center. The flights were conducted at a simulated lunar terrain site, consisting of realistic hazard features and designated landing areas, built at NASA Kennedy Space Center specifically for this demonstration test. This paper also provides an overview of the plan for continued advancement of the flash lidar technology aimed at enhancing its performance to meet both landing and automated rendezvous and docking applications.NASA's interest in flash lidar technology stems from its ability to record full 3-D images with a single laser pulse, freezing the scene on every frame by removing all motion of the transmitter/receiver platform. Unlike earlier topographic imaging lidar systems that generated 3D images by scanning the laser beam across the scene and measuring the time of arrival for https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20150010965 2020-07-04T14:06:10+00:00Z Figure 2. a) Orion vehicle docking with an Earth Departure Stage; b) Lidar sensor characterizing an asteroid surface before terminal approach for collecting samples or capturing a boulder.

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“…The Laser Altimeter provides independent altitude data over a large operational altitude range of 20 km to 100 m. All three laser sensors have a nominal update rate of 30 Hz. The manner in which the three ALHAT lidar sensors are utilized to achieve the required sensor functions is reported elsewhere 6 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Helicopter Flight Test of a Compact, Real-Time 3-D Flash Lidar for Imaging Hazardous Terrain during Planetary Landing

Roback

Amzajerdian

Brewster

et al. 2013

AIAA SPACE 2013 Conference and Exposition

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A second generation, compact, real-time, air-cooled 3-D imaging Flash Lidar sensor system, developed from a number of cutting-edge components from industry and NASA, is lab characterized and helicopter flight tested under the Autonomous Precision Landing and Hazard Detection and Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) project. The ALHAT project is seeking to develop a guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) and sensing system based on lidar technology capable of enabling safe, precise crewed or robotic landings in challenging terrain on planetary bodies under any ambient lighting conditions. The Flash Lidar incorporates a 3-D imaging video camera based on Indium-Gallium-Arsenide Avalanche Photo Diode and novel micro-electronic technology for a 128 x 128 pixel array operating at a video rate of 20 Hz, a high pulse-energy 1.06 µm Neodymium-doped: Yttrium Aluminum Garnet (Nd:YAG) laser, a remote laser safety termination system, high performance transmitter and receiver optics with one and five degrees field-of-view (FOV), enhanced onboard thermal control, as well as a compact and self-contained suite of support electronics housed in a single box and built around a PC-104 architecture to enable autonomous operations. The Flash Lidar was developed and then characterized at two NASA-Langley Research Center (LaRC) outdoor laser test range facilities both statically and dynamically, integrated with other ALHAT GN&C subsystems from partner organizations, and installed onto a Bell UH-1H Iroquois "Huey" helicopter at LaRC. The integrated system was flight tested at the NASA-Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on simulated lunar approach to a custom hazard field consisting of rocks, craters, hazardous slopes, and safe-sites near the Shuttle Landing Facility runway starting at slant ranges of 750 m. In order to evaluate different methods of achieving hazard detection, the lidar, in conjunction with the ALHAT hazard detection and GN&C system, operates in both a narrow 1° FOV raster-scanning mode in which successive, gimbaled images of the hazard field are mosaicked together as well as in a wider, 4.85° FOV staring mode in which digital magnification, via a novel 3-D superresolution technique, is used to effectively achieve the same spatial precision attained with the more narrow FOV optics. The lidar generates calibrated and corrected 3-D range images of the hazard field in real-time and passes them to the ALHAT Hazard Detection System (HDS) which stitches the images together to generate on-the-fly Digital Elevation

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Lidar Sensors for Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance

Cited by 34 publications

References 11 publications

Flight testing a Real-Time Hazard Detection System for Safe Lunar Landing on the Rocket-Powered Morpheus Vehicle

Flight testing a Real-Time Hazard Detection System for Safe Lunar Landing on the Rocket-Powered Morpheus Vehicle

Imaging flash LIDAR for safe landing on solar system bodies and spacecraft rendezvous and docking

Helicopter Flight Test of a Compact, Real-Time 3-D Flash Lidar for Imaging Hazardous Terrain during Planetary Landing

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