Sensor Testing for Telerobotic Perception during Asteroid and Mars Regolith Operations

The effect of dust and adverse lighting conditions on telerobotic perception systems sensors was investigated to better assess and refine regolith operations for asteroid, Mars, and lunar missions. Low illumination and low-angle-of-incidence lighting pose significant problems to computer and human vision. Levitated dust on asteroids interferes with imaging and degrades depth perception. Dust storms on Mars will pose significant hazards to autonomous robot operations if robotic perception problems are not solved. The industrial partner for this project was Caterpillar Inc., who provided the sensors for environmental testing and characterization. The telerobotic perception systems testing performed in this work is also relevant to terrestrial operations with autonomous vehicles in mines, on construction sites, and on roads. Testing was performed in the Swamp Works Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab at Kennedy Space Center using the regolith test bed (RTB). The RTB is an enclosed volume filled with approximately 120 tons of Black Point-1 basalt rock regolith simulant. The test equipment included Caterpillar, Inc. telerobotic sensors, dust density measurement system, and a pneumatic dust generation system (DGS). The Caterpillar telerobotic sensors included a light detection and ranging (LIDAR), radio detection and ranging (RADAR), and a stereovision camera. The DGS was used to loft regolith fines and dust into the air to simulate dusty environmental conditions while the dust density measurement system measured the dust density as the dust settled.