AEGIS autonomous targeting for ChemCam on Mars Science Laboratory: Deployment and results of initial science team use

Abstract

Limitations on interplanetary communications create operations latencies and slow progress in planetary surface missions, with particular challenges to narrow-field-of-view science instruments requiring precise targeting. The AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) autonomous targeting system has been in routine use on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover since May 2016, selecting targets for the ChemCam remote geochemical spectrometer instrument. AEGIS operates in two modes; in autonomous target selection, it identifies geological targets in images from the rover's navigation cameras, choosing for itself targets that match the parameters specified by mission scientists the most, and immediately measures them with ChemCam, without Earth in the loop. In autonomous pointing refinement, the system corrects small pointing errors on the order of a few milliradians in observations targeted by operators on Earth, allowing very small features to be observed reliably on the first attempt. AEGIS consistently recognizes and selects the geological materials requested of it, parsing and interpreting geological scenes in tens to hundreds of seconds with very limited computing resources. Performance in autonomously selecting the most desired target material over the last 2.5 kilometers of driving into previously unexplored terrain exceeds 93% (where ~24% is expected without intelligent targeting), and all observations resulted in a successful geochemical observation. The system has substantially reduced lost time on the mission and markedly increased the pace of data collection with ChemCam. AEGIS autonomy has rapidly been adopted as an exploration tool by the mission scientists and has influenced their strategy for exploring the rover's environment. ChemCam ChemCam (short for "chemistry and camera") is a mast-mounted, targetable, remote-sensing instrument aboard the Curiosity rover (19, 20).

Exo-Ocean Exploration with Deep-Sea Sensor and Platform Technologies

“…The platform hosting the scientific instruments would autonomously prioritize objectives to maximize its efficiency while obeying resource and time constraints as well as completing mandatory activities, such as rendezvous for communication. To increase the effectiveness of the scientific operations, methods for semiautonomous and autonomous data collection would be designed and implemented for identifying regions of scientific interest (Zhang et al, 2012(Zhang et al, , 2016Flexas et al, 2018), scientifically relevant features like hydrothermal vents , and select targets on which to perform observations (Estlin et al, 2012, Francis et al, 2017. A strategy for high-level human guidance is required to allow for refinement of autonomous behaviors based on analysis of data by scientists on Earth.…”

Self‐reliant rovers for increased mission productivity

“…• Autonomous science: Identifies science targets when the rover enters an unexplored area. Increases the scope of guidance that scientists can provide and deepens the integration with onboard planning, as compared with previous autonomous science on MSL (Francis et al, 2017). This addresses Productivity Challenge Item 2 by enabling the rover to identify its own targets, with the help of scientist guidance, without waiting for ground-in-the-loop interaction.…”

“…There have been a variety of autonomous science systems deployed or proposed for rovers including the AEGIS system running on the opportunity and curiosity rovers (Francis et al, 2017), and the SARA component proposed for an ExoMars rover (Woods et al, 2009). These systems allow the rover to identify targets in its surroundings that match scientist-provided criteria.…”

Multi-modal active perception for information gathering in science missions

“…The purpose of AEGIS is to automatically detect scientifically interesting features in the environment encountered during traversals through various computer vision techniques, and to take follow up measurements by pointing remote sensing instruments such as spectrometers. It has been deployed successfully on both Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, and improved the science return by reducing the need to wait between command cycles for scientists on Earth to manually analyze rover imagery for interesting targets [33].…”