NASA’s Perseverance rover has been trundling throughout the floor of Mars since arriving on the planet in spectacular vogue in February final yr.
The six-wheeled, SUV-sized car is presently on its solution to the Jezero River Delta because it continues its seek for proof of historic microbial life on the crimson 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 prime velocity of 0.1 mph, Perseverance is shifting at about the identical tempo as a tortoise (a gradual one, at that!), overlaying round 300 yards a day.
When NASA’s rover is making its approach throughout lengthy distances between areas of curiosity, as it’s doing now, the workforce 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 capacity is similar to self-driving vehicles on Earth, however there are totally different challenges,” Del Sesto says. So whereas autonomous vehicles on Earth use a set of sensors and cameras to look out for different automobiles, cyclists, and pedestrians, Perseverance is utilizing related expertise to keep away from rocks, sand, craters and cliffs to be able to keep secure.
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 properly the rover is performing throughout its drives on the faraway planet. One large benefit over earlier NASA rovers akin to Curiosity is that Perseverance is ready to course of and analyze captured pictures whereas driving, enabling it to finish journeys extra shortly that its predecessor, which must cease, take pictures, after which course of them earlier than selecting a secure route. NASA calls Perseverance’s system a “thinking-while-driving functionality.”
For extra sophisticated routes or driving maneuvers, the rover workforce at JPL will don 3D glasses and look at the close by terrain extra intently because the rover advances.
“Perseverance’s self-driving capacity is essential to this mission,” Del Sesto says. “It permits us to get to the Jezero Rover Delta as quick as potential and that offers the science workforce as a lot time there to check the rocks and gather samples for future return to Earth.”
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