[1] An experiment illustrating two rovers cooperatively exploring a field site was performed at Black Rock Summit, Nevada, in May 2000. The rovers FIDO and K9 are mechanically identical prototype planetary rovers designed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. FIDO carried high-resolution false-color infrared and low-resolution monochrome stereo cameras and an infrared point spectrometer on a mast-mounted pointable platform, a manipulator arm equipped with a color microscopic imager, and a coring drill for sample collection. K9 carried on a mast-mounted pointable platform highresolution color and low-resolution monochrome stereo cameras, and a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometer for standoff elemental analysis. A team located at Jet Propulsion Laboratory commanded the two rovers for 3 days. K9 obtained stereo images of targets, and three-dimensional models were constructed to determine the best locations for FIDO to obtain core samples. A drilling target was selected 1.5 m from the starting position of FIDO. Six command cycles and 2 m of traversing were required for FIDO to reach, drill into, and place an instrument on the target. K9 required 11 command cycles to traverse 60 m and obtain full-coverage stereo images of two rock targets along its route. Virtual reality-based visualization software called Viz provided situational awareness of the environment for both rovers. Commands to K9 were planned using Viz, resulting in improved rover performance. The results show that two rovers can be used synergistically to achieve science goals, but further testing is needed to completely explore the value of two-rover missions.
This paper presents a novel architecture allowing a generic force-feedback device to be used by different software tools dedicated to teleoperation and mission planning. This architecture relies on a "force-server" program running between the real-time controller of the haptic device and a set of applications using it. Possible applications include mission ground control system interfaces, telemetry systems coming back from real robots, or external simulation programs.The force-server concept is based on a high-level description of the forces to be generated. This description consists of spatial constraints defined by their type (point, line, plane and mesh), position and orientation. A force profile (space and/or time dependent) is assigned to each constraint. This description enables the generation of complex fields of forces by combining basic constraints.The advantage of this method is that an application can send force updates by simply modifying several parameters of the constraint. Between two updates (from the application) the force-server is able to continously compute new forces corresponding to the actual position of the device handle. This approach enables the control loop of the force feedback device to easily run at 500Hz when the application may send updates only at 25Hz.This novel method widens the use of force-feedback devices by providing a common interface to the different applications, and allowing multiple clients to use the same haptic device. A testbed using a 6 DOF haptic device has been developed. The device generates forces coming simultaneously from three different sources: a Java interface to experiment various force profiles, a rover simulator, and a scientific visualization tool used during planetary missions.
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