Simulation and Testbeds of Autonomous Robots in Harsh Environments

Stansbury, Richard S.; Akers, Eric L.; Harmon, Hans; Agah, Arvin

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-68951-5_4

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…MARVIN I and MARVIN II, developed by the University of Kansas, are 720-kg diesel-powered tracked rovers derived from commercial all-terrain vehicles and are intended to conduct radar and seismic investigations of polar ice sheets Gifford, Akers, Stansbury, & Agah, 2009;Stansbury, Akers, Harmon, & Agah, 2004). Their goals were similar to ours: to improve survey efficiency, safety, and precision compared with humanconducted surveys.…”

Section: Rovers For Extreme Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It became stuck periodically, most frequently during skid-steer turns, and its transmission eventually failed . Satellite reception was good, between 9 and 15 satellites for GPS and GLONASS combined, and within 100 m of the base station GPS accuracy averaged about one millimeter (Stansbury et al, 2004). MARVIN II incorporated design improvements, including a change to the hydrostatic drive and built-in track systems.…”

Section: Rovers For Extreme Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Autonomous GPR surveys using the polar rover Yeti

Lever¹,

Delaney²,

Ray³

et al. 2022

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The National Science Foundation operates stations on the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland to investigate Earth’s climate history, life in extreme environments, and the evolution of the cosmos. Understandably, logistics costs predominate budgets due to the remote locations and harsh environments involved. Currently, manual ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys must preceed vehicle travel across polar ice sheets to detect subsurface crevasses or other voids. This exposes the crew to the risks of undetected hazards. We have developed an autonomous rover, Yeti, specifically to conduct GPR surveys across polar ice sheets. It is a simple four-wheel-drive, battery-powered vehicle that executes autonomous surveys via GPS waypoint following. We describe here three recent Yeti deployments, two in Antarctica and one in Greenland. Our key objective was to demonstrate the operational value of a rover to locate subsurface hazards. Yeti operated reliably at −30 ◦C, and it has good oversnow mobility and adequate GPS accuracy for waypoint-following and hazard georeferencing. It has acquired data on hundreds of crevasse encounters to improve our understanding of heavily crevassed traverse routes and to develop automated crevasse-detection algorithms. Importantly, it helped to locate a previously undetected buried building at the South Pole. Yeti can improve safety by decoupling survey personnel from the consequences of undetected hazards. It also enables higher-quality systematic surveys to improve hazard-detection probabilities, increase assessment confidence, and build datasets to understand the evolution of these regions. Yeti has demonstrated that autonomous vehicles have great potential to improve the safety and efficiency of polar logistics.

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Section: Rovers For Extreme Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Rovers For Extreme Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%