Autonomous Mars Rover Simulation

This report documents the development and evaluation of a simulation of rovers performing science-gathering missions on the surface of Mars. To satisfy the project objectives a simulation was written, in C++, containing • a number of simulated rovers, that can be equipped with a variety of tools; • a range of simulated surface features, such as rocks, that simulated rovers interact with; • a simulated lander, with a communication link, for the rovers to communicate their gathered data to; • an interface to planning systems. The software running on the rovers makes use of a number of different algorithms, described in the report, including techniques to deal with dynamic obstacle avoidance. Two planning systems—Sapa and VHPOP—have been integrated with the system and are capable of generating series of actions for the rovers to execute in order to achieve some user-specified goals. The Evaluation section of the report covers the details of empirical testing performed and presents results which show that: • The simulation met its original objectives; • An multi-threaded implementation of the simulation kernel is able to make good use of multi-processor hardware; • Global path planning, using D*, offers better performance than a local approach; • Terrain costs can be observed and used to effectively reduce navigation time over partially known terrain. The report concludes with a review of the achievements made during the course of the project and any remaining open issues or further work that could be pursued. Document Word Count: 16755