Autonomous Lunar Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance System

Chakroborty, Shyama; Aboutalib, Omar; Meade, Carl J.

doi:10.2514/6.2009-6452

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…14,15,16 Commercial entities have invested internal research and development funds to investigate algorithms for hazard detection and for development and field-testing of hazard detection and avoidance systems. 17,18 Providing the relevant environment for an ALHAT TRL six demonstration is the Morpheus lander. Morpheus is a prototype robotic planetary lander that serves as a VTB for advanced spacecraft technologies.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free-Flight Terrestrial Rocket Lander Demonstration for NASA's Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) System

Rutishauser

Epp

Robertson

2012

AIAA SPACE 2012 Conference &Amp; Exposition

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Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free-Flight Terrestrial Rocket Lander Demonstration for NASA's Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) System

Rutishauser

Epp

Robertson

2012

AIAA SPACE 2012 Conference &Amp; Exposition

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“…A picture of the ladar integrated to the Bell 206 and sample terrain data is shown inFigure 4. Results of the flight test and subsequent hazard detection algorithm development were presented 4. Ball Flash LADAR ready for camera mount (A), integrated onto the Bell 206 (B) and resulting terrain data of the NGAS simulated lunar surface (C).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Flash Ladar Flight Testing and Pathway to UAV Deployment

Nicks

Staple

Delker

et al. 2010

AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2010

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The Ball Aerospace 5 th Generation Flash Ladar system which produces real-time, 3-dimensional (3D) video in all lighting conditions has been demonstrated to be a significant enabler to enhance the mission capabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These new capabilities include enhanced Intelligence, Reconnaissance and Surveillance (ISR), Automated Target Recognition (ATR), improved situational awareness, GPS denied (terrain relative) navigation, 3D surface mapping, surface change detection (detection of buried improvised explosive devices), camouflage penetration, autonomous aerial refueling and autonomous landing. Ball Aerospace 5 th Generation Flash Ladar system has benefited from over 6 years of development, is compact, modular, and has been demonstrated to be easily integrated and flight-tested on both fixed-wing and rotorcraft with different optical configurations. This paper presents the results of airborne test activities and sample imagery of our 5 th Generation system and discusses options for repackaging and integrating the system into UAV platforms.

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“…It happens frequently that the terrain conditions of these area are more complicated, this not only poses a great challenge to the spacecraft Guidance, Navigation, & Control Systems, but also requests more higher demand to the performance of landing obstacle detection and the efficiency of the landing site selection. Up to now, using multiple sensors data for hazard detection have been proposed (Brady et al, 2009;Neveu et al, 2015), including passive optical image data (Bajracharya, 2002;Cheng et al, 2001;Cohanim et al, 2013;Huertas et al, 2006;Mahmood and Saaj, 2015;Matthies et al, 2008;Woicke and Mooij, 2016;Yan et al, 2013), LiDAR data (Amzajerdian et al, 2013;Chakroborty et al, 2009;de Lafontaine et al, 2006;Johnson et al, 2002) and Radar data (Pollard et al, 2003), and so forth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation Experiment on Landing Site Selection Using a Simple Geometric Approach

Zhao

Tong

Xie

et al. 2017

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:Safe landing is an important part of the planetary exploration mission. Even fine scale terrain hazards (such as rocks, small craters, steep slopes, which would not be accurately detected from orbital reconnaissance) could also pose a serious risk on planetary lander or rover and scientific instruments on-board it. In this paper, a simple geometric approach on planetary landing hazard detection and safe landing site selection is proposed. In order to achieve full implementation of this algorithm, two easy-to-compute metrics are presented for extracting the terrain slope and roughness information. Unlike conventional methods which must do the robust plane fitting and elevation interpolation for DEM generation, in this work, hazards is identified through the processing directly on LiDAR point cloud. For safe landing site selection, a Generalized Voronoi Diagram is constructed. Based on the idea of maximum empty circle, the safest landing site can be determined. In this algorithm, hazards are treated as general polygons, without special simplification (e.g. regarding hazards as discrete circles or ellipses). So using the aforementioned method to process hazards is more conforming to the real planetary exploration scenario. For validating the approach mentioned above, a simulated planetary terrain model was constructed using volcanic ash with rocks in indoor environment. A commercial laser scanner mounted on a rail was used to scan the terrain surface at different hanging positions. The results demonstrate that fairly hazard detection capability and reasonable site selection was obtained compared with conventional method, yet less computational time and less memory usage was consumed. Hence, it is a feasible candidate approach for future precision landing selection on planetary surface.

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Autonomous Lunar Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance System

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

Free-Flight Terrestrial Rocket Lander Demonstration for NASA's Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) System

Free-Flight Terrestrial Rocket Lander Demonstration for NASA's Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) System

Flash Ladar Flight Testing and Pathway to UAV Deployment

Simulation Experiment on Landing Site Selection Using a Simple Geometric Approach

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