MASTER'S THESIS Autonomous Vision-Based Docking of the Tethered Axel Rover for Planetary Exploration

Acknowledgements I thank my supervisor, Professor Emiritus Aarne Halme, and instructor, Tomi Ylikorpi, for granting me the freedom to go far away from Finland, to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to study autonomous docking on the Axel rover. Tomi was particularly instrumental in arranging and establishing contacts at NASA, and throughout the thesis , continued to provide guidance and logistics. I also thank Thomas Gustaffson for his constructive comments during the midterm and final presentations. This thesis would never have been realized without the guidance, wisdom and encouragement from my JPL instructor, Dr. Issa Nesnas. As the lead for the Axel team, Issa was able to provide me with access to all the necessary hardware and software required to accomplish my thesis, as well as some of the insight in improve and debug the docking algorithm and the rover itself. I sincerely thank Dr. Dimitri Zarzhitsky for providing unbelievable support by acting as my both my mentor, and supporter. Dimitri also established communication, telemetry and image grabbing with the rover. Thanks to Adnan Ansar for providing his vision expertise for the fiducial detection, as well as the stereo vision and pose estimation. I thank Jack Morrison and Edward Barlow for maintaining and debugging the Axel rover. I would also like to thank the rest of the Axel team, including Professor Joel W. Bur-dick and Melissa Tanner whom I consulted with throughout my thesis. Thanks to Die-for assisting with the long days of rushed field experiments at the very end of the thesis in the JPL Mars Yard. Finally, I am very grateful to Victoria Barabash at Lulea Technical University, and the Erasmus Mundus Foundation for their commitment to education and their efforts in facilitating international experiences to learn more and better understand each other. I also thank Eric Halbach, who's continued outreach efforts for the Spacemaster programme provided me the opportunity to study abroad. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family who supported me throughout my thesis work and travels. Some of the most interesting scientific targets for future planetary exploration missions are located in terrain inaccessible to state-of-the-art rover technology, such as exposed impact craters and the Skylight holes on Mars. In order to explore this extreme terrain, the Axel rover has been proposed. It is a two-wheeled tethered robot capable of rappelling steep slopes and traversing rocky terrain. For untethered mobility between scientific targets, two …