Planet Surface Simulation for Testing Vision-Based, Autonomous Planetary Landers

Paper number

IAC-06-A3.P.3.09

Author

Dr. Steve Parkes, University of Dundee, United Kingdom

Coauthor

Dr. Martin Dunstan, University of Dundee, United Kingdom

Coauthor

Dr. Iain Martin, University of Dundee, United Kingdom

Coauthor

Dr. Peter Mendham, University of Dundee, United Kingdom

Coauthor

Mr. Salvatore Mancuso, European Space Agency/Headquarters, France

Year

2006

Abstract

The ESA is planning a series of robotic missions to Mars including a sample return mission. The safe delivery of robotic missions to the surface of Mars will be greatly assisted by landing systems capable of autonomous navigation and hazard detection and avoidance. Vision-based navigation is a promising technique which is currently being developed by ESA. The testing of vision-based navigation systems can benefit from computer based planet surface simulations representative of the target planetary body. 
The PANGU (Planet and Asteroid Natural Scene Generation Utility) is a software tool for simulating and visualising the surface of various planetary bodies. It has been designed to support the development of planetary landers that use computer vision to navigate towards the surface and to avoid any obstacles near the landing site.  PANGU can be used to generate an artificial surface representative of the Moon, Mercury, Mars or asteroids and to provide images of the simulated planetary body. 
PANGU builds a planet surface model starting with a predefined surface (e.g. an existing digital elevation model if available) or a fractal surface generated by PANGU. Craters are placed on the terrain according to a user defined crater size-density distribution.  The crater models combine idealised mathematical impact crater models with fractal techniques to produce a realistic appearance to the craters.  Boulders, sand dunes and other small scale features may then be added according to the characteristics of the target planet surface.
Given the position and orientation of a camera above the surface, PANGU generates the corresponding image. The position of the sun and other illumination conditions can be modelled. PANGU has been designed to give a high degree of realism while operating at near real-time speeds to enable closed loop simulation of complete vision-based navigation systems.
As well as cameras scanning LIDAR and radar altimeters may also be simulated. These simulations allow comprehensive evaluation of various navigation sensor combinations for planetary landers. The effectiveness of redundancy schemes involving different sensors may also be explored.
The full paper will describe PANGU in detail and include example images and video clips during the presentation. The current use of the PANGU tool for the ESA vision navigation camera will be outlined.

Abstract document

IAC-06-A3.P.3.09.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-06-A3.P.3.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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