Onboard Autonomy on the Intelligent Payload Experiment CubeSat Mission

Chien, Steve; Doubleday, Joshua; Thompson, David R.; Wagstaff, Kiri L.; Bellardo, John; Francis, C. R.; Baumgarten, Eric; Williams, Austin; Yee, Edmund; Stanton, Eric T.; Piug-Suari, Jordi

doi:10.2514/1.i010386

Cited by 44 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…To identify individual units, we use the existing pixel-wise classification software TextureCam (Thompson et al, 2012). The generality of TextureCam allows it to be used for identifying everything from specific geologic units for surface missions to atmospheric features such as clouds seen from space during orbital missions (Chien et al, 2016) These probabilities are combined to produce a "contact score" for each pixel in the image, which corresponds to the probability that the two units are adjacent at that pixel. After the contact score is derived, any number of algorithms (some of which are described below) can be used to select targets for observation based on this score.…”

Section: Novel Tools For Scientist-guided Autonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐reliant rovers for increased mission productivity

Gaines

Doran

Paton

et al. 2020

Journal of Field Robotics

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Achieving consistently high levels of productivity has been a challenge for Mars surface missions. While the rovers have made major discoveries and dramatically increased our understanding of Mars, they require a great deal of interaction from the operations teams, and achieving mission objectives can take longer than anticipated when productivity is paced by the ground teams' ability to react. We have conducted a project to explore technologies and techniques for creating self‐reliant rovers (SRR): rovers that are able to maintain high levels of productivity with reduced reliance on ground interactions. This paper describes the design of SRR and a prototype implementation that we deployed on a research rover. We evaluated the system by conducting a simulated campaign in which members of the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) science team used our rover to explore a geographical region. The evaluation demonstrated the system's ability to maintain high levels of productivity with limited communication with operators.

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Section: Novel Tools For Scientist-guided Autonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐reliant rovers for increased mission productivity

Gaines

Doran

Paton

et al. 2020

Journal of Field Robotics

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“…LTA has also been a growing part of satellite operations, e.g. the Intelligent Payload Experiment (IPEX) demonstrating over a year of autonomous information gathering using planning and image processing technology [11].…”

Section: Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial Intelligence for Long-Term Robot Autonomy: A Survey

Kunze

Hawes

Duckett

et al. 2018

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

158

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Abstract-Autonomous systems will play an essential role in many applications across diverse domains including space, marine, air, field, road, and service robotics. They will assist us in our daily routines and perform dangerous, dirty and dull tasks. However, enabling robotic systems to perform autonomously in complex, real-world scenarios over extended time periods (i.e. weeks, months, or years) poses many challenges. Some of these have been investigated by sub-disciplines of Artificial Intelligence (AI) including navigation & mapping, perception, knowledge representation & reasoning, planning, interaction, and learning. The different sub-disciplines have developed techniques that, when re-integrated within an autonomous system, can enable robots to operate effectively in complex, long-term scenarios. In this paper, we survey and discuss AI techniques as 'enablers' for long-term robot autonomy, current progress in integrating these techniques within long-running robotic systems, and the future challenges and opportunities for AI in long-term autonomy.

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“…The use of Linux in small satellite developments is not new (e.g. [20,[24][25][26][27][28]) and also…”

Section: Review Of Current Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Guidelines for General-Purpose Payload-Oriented Nanosatellite Software Architectures

López

Marí

Balust

et al. 2018

Journal of Aerospace Information Systems

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Despite their limited lifespan and reduced cost, nano-satellite missions have proved to be suitable platforms for Earth observation, scientific experiments and technology demonstration. During the last years, the number of nanosatellite missions has noticeably increased, posing the need to improve several system characteristics to ultimately endorse the full potential of this class of spacecraft. In this context, this paper presents three design guidelines that can be applied in nano-satellite software in order to improve the system robustness, modularity and autonomy. The design guidelines presented in this paper, namely, hierarchy-enabled robustness, payload-oriented modularity, and on-board planning capabilities, are complemented with a structured review of complementary software techniques and architectural concepts that have been found in the literature. The paper justifies that these system-wide qualities are some of the most critical when designing flight software for CubeSat-like spacecraft and explores how they can improve mission performances and operability, enhance the system's tolerance to failures and ease the development cycles. Finally, this paper illustrates the application of the design guidelines by detailing the on-board software architecture for the 3 Cat-1, a CubeSat program carried out at the Nano-Satellite and Payload Laboratory of the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC BarcelonaTech).

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Onboard Autonomy on the Intelligent Payload Experiment CubeSat Mission

Cited by 44 publications

References 22 publications

Self‐reliant rovers for increased mission productivity

Self‐reliant rovers for increased mission productivity

Artificial Intelligence for Long-Term Robot Autonomy: A Survey

Design Guidelines for General-Purpose Payload-Oriented Nanosatellite Software Architectures

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