I believe that this nation should commit
itself to achieving the goal before this
decade is out of landing a man on the
moon and returning him safely to the
earth from the Sea of Tranquility
President Kennedy's hope was realized
the lunar landing was the climax of the
Apollo years it was an era of excitement
of adventure that sent the American
spirit soaring for the new century back
to the moon back to the future and this
time back to stay and then a journey
into tomorrow a journey to another
planet a manned mission to Mars the
announcement came on the 20th
anniversary of Man's first visit to the
moon President Bush's pledge to take
another giant leap for mankind may very
well rekindle the spirit that stirred
the imagination and sent a generation
gazing skyward to the greatest adventure
of our time space exploration developing
new technology including a new
generation of planetary rover is
critical to the president's space
initiative in the years ahead these
cost-effective vehicles with their
sophisticated technology will perform
the advanced work of sight exploration
and engineering as america prepares to
build a lunar outpost and journeys on to
Mars nASA has begun an important new
technology initiative which will develop
the technologies needed for the
exploration missions one of the
technology program elements is the
planetary Rover
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena California this new breed of
space hardware has moved beyond the
drawing boards unlike the first
generation of lunar Rovers the new breed
of unmanned Rovers with their stereo
eyes and powerful onboard computers will
drive themselves like no vehicle has in
the past the current rover technology
owes much to another generation of
hardware and to another generation of
engineers it started in the 1960s with
the development of the manned apollo
lunar rover vehicle a prototype unmanned
lunar rover that never did make it to
the moon and in the years since the job
of developing a more sophisticated Rover
design has been passed on to another
generation of engineers these two
engineers were in grade school during
the inspiring days of the Apollo program
but there is a surprising continuity in
the evolution of the new Rover Brian
Wilcox was only 12 years old the day
that the early surveyor lunar rover
vehicle prototype rolled out for testing
Brian's father was the director of
research and engineering at General
Motors Defence Research Laboratory where
that vehicle was built under contract to
JPL today brian is the navigation system
manager for the JPL Rover project his
job to take the newest technology and
pick up where past dreamers and
engineers left off and build a vehicle
that can drive itself on another planet
on this vehicle we have computers that
are able to perform several millions of
operations per second compared to
perhaps a few hundred operations per
second
the vehicles designed in the 60s and so
we're able to autonomously move six to
ten miles a day and to do that without
human intervention although planetary
surface exploration stalled in the years
following Apollo lunar rover and Viking
Mars Lander successes research and
development at JPL has continued one
example is military robotic vehicle
technology programs with synergistic
autonomous navigation technology the new
space initiative has happened and JPL is
ready with early versions of the next
generation of Rovers today marks the
debut of Robbie the new Rover navigation
testbed vehicle today's test is the
culmination of many years of work for
just one of JPL's dedicated teams but it
is also the continuation of the dream of
early NASA visionaries the test today is
to demonstrate semi autonomous
navigation what we will do is several
cycles of semi autonomous navigation
where the vehicle will take images it
will correlate those images to find the
distance to each point in the in the
scene it will match that information
with a global terrain database and then
it will plan a path based on that best
estimated knowledge of the terrain
surface the semi autonomous navigation
system will now be put to the test Andy
Michigan what we've gotten to today is
basically the result of integrating many
different subsystems that involve many
different elements the hardware the
software sensing by the vehicle the
perception and the determination what
what is the terrain in front of the
vehicle the conversion of that to an
appropriate map
and integrating that with a path planner
which takes that data and and plans a
safe path all of those pieces had to
come together and work together to allow
us to get to today the cameras should
scan and do local terrain maps of this
area here and it should find the a
traversable path around Roger Bedard the
unmanned rover navigation work that
you're seeing in terms of the test work
going on down here is but one part of
the NASA rover program there's other
technology work going on at JPL in the
power area and the mobility area in the
mission operations area there's also
work at other centers at Ames Research
Center at Marshall Space Flight Center
and work at universities mainly at
carnegie mellon university the rover
must drive itself around a rock mound to
a destination behind the mound which is
not visible from its starting point the
trail is apparent to the human eye and
mind but will Robbie with its machine
intelligence find the way there will be
no communication with the rover it will
have to navigate on its own for the team
and Robbie the test site is as remote as
Mars 35 million miles away a likely
place for it to be used would be on Mars
either doing a sample return and
exploration or survey of sites for
eventual human outpost they could do
that on the moon as well with all
systems go Robbie begins to make his way
across the landscape
by far it's the most sophisticated of
all rover designs its distinction goes
beyond the stereo cameras that double
for eyes and the flexible backbone of
its three parts chassis and the high
gear ratios that provide the muscle to
climb over boulders what makes this
Rover unique is its computer software
the semi autonomous navigation or San
technology simply put Sam is the onboard
intelligence in a PC sized computer that
provides the brains to navigate and
drive the vehicle to understand how
Robbie finds his way around a rock mount
for example let's look inside first the
electronic eyes view the mound and the
computer understands it to be an
obstacle this is the combined panoramic
data from those three scans you see the
vehicle has its six wheels turned into a
hard left turn and then when we go to
combine that with the global data and
the original data from the first path
this is what results considering the
programmed restrictions the computerized
semi autonomous navigation system like a
human navigator begins to make decisions
to follow a path of least resistance the
process occurs over and over as Robbie
cautiously moves forward as Robbie is
moving the onboard computers continually
monitor the movement and trigger reflex
actions if the path execution is not as
predicted as Robbie progresses towards
its final destination the look of
success sweeps across the faces of those
who have worked so long and so hard for
this moment the semi autonomous
navigation experiment may have been only
a first step a first step in developing
a kind of machine intelligence that
someday will affect not only how we
explore the universe but how we live out
our lives on earth
the NASA Exploration Technologies
program will lead the way as America
once again reaches out into the last
frontier the frontier of space