Slip-compensated path following for planetary exploration rovers

A system that enables continuous slip compensation for a Mars rover has been designed, implemented, and field-tested. This system is composed of several components that allow the rover to accurately and continuously follow a designated path, compensate for slippage, and reach intended goals in high-slip environments. These components include: visual odometry, vehicle kinematics, a Kalman filter pose estimator, and a slip-compensated path follower. Visual odometry tracks distinctive scene features in stereo imagery to estimate rover motion between successively acquired stereo image pairs. The kinematics for a rocker-bogie suspension system estimates vehicle motion by measuring wheel rates, and rocker, bogie, and steering angles. The Kalman filter processes measurements from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and visual odometry. The filter estimate is then compared to the kinematic estimate to determine whether slippage has occurred, taking into account estimate uncertainties. If slippage is detected, the slip vector is calculated by differencing the current Kalman filter estimate from the kinematic estimate. This slip vector is then used to determine the necessary wheel velocities and steering angles to compensate for slip and follow the desired path. keywords: rover navigation, visual odometry, slip compensation, Kalman filter, rover kinematics.