Computing Advances to Enable Speedy New Rover on the Red Planet
Technology Infused: The Mars 2020 mission has recently adopted a baseline that includes SMD-sponsored technology developments that will enable its rover to drive faster, more safely, and with improved energy efficiency. Planetary rovers have traditionally been limited by the available computational power of space-qualified processors. For example, when the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover drives autonomously, its limited computation capability forces it to stop for a substantial period while the navigation software identifies a hazard-free path using acquired imagery. The resulting limitation on driving duty cycle reduces the MSL rover’s average traverse rate. Frame capture of a video documenting the navigation performance of the FPGA-based system. Overlays show the derived stereo image range map and terrain goodness map. FastTraverse leverages newly available avionics—large, reprogrammable, radiation-hardened Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)—to enable faster and higher resolution image processing. A synergistic set of software changes enables navigation processing and driving to occur simultaneously. In other...