In this report, we present the system design, operational strategy, and results of coordinated multi-vehicle field demonstrations of autonomous marine robotic technologies in search-for-life missions within the Pacific shelf margin of Costa Rica and the Santorini-Kolumbo caldera complex, which serve as analogs to environments that may exist in oceans beyond Earth. This report focuses on the automation of ROV manipulator operations for targeted biological sample-collection-and-return from the seafloor. In the context of future extraterrestrial exploration missions to ocean worlds, an ROV is an analog to a planetary lander, which must be capable of high-level autonomy. Our field trials involve two underwater vehicles, the SuBastian ROV and the Nereid Under Ice (NUI) hybrid ROV for mixed initiative (i.e., teleoperated or autonomous) missions, both equipped 7-DoF hydraulic manipulators. We describe an adaptable, hardware-independent computer vision architecture that enables high-level automated manipulation. The vision system provides a 3D understanding of the workspace to inform manipulator motion planning in complex unstructured environments. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the vision system and control framework through field trials in increasingly challenging environments, including the automated collection and return of biological samples from within the active undersea volcano, Kolumbo. Based on our experiences in the field, we discuss the performance of our system and identify promising directions for future research.
翻译:在本报告中,我们介绍了系统设计、操作战略和在哥斯达黎加太平洋大陆架边缘和Santorini-Kollumbo Caldera综合建筑群内寻找生命任务的自主海洋机器人技术协调多车辆实地演示的结果,这些技术与地球以外海洋中可能存在的环境类似。本报告侧重于遥控潜水器操纵操作操作自动化,用于定向生物取样采集和从海底返回。在未来外向海洋世界的探索任务中,一台遥控潜水器类似于行星着陆器,该定位器必须具有高度自主性。我们的实地试验涉及两部水下潜水器,即苏巴斯蒂安遥控器和内里德位于冰下(NUII)的混合潜水器,用于混合举措(即远程操作或自主),这两个飞行任务都配备了7-多弗液压操纵器。我们描述了一个适应性、硬件独立的计算机视野架构,能够进行高层自动化自动操纵。视觉系统提供了对工作空间的了解,以便为复杂的非结构环境的操纵器动作规划提供信息。我们从空间中展示了在不断更新的实地研究环境中的动态定位,我们从不断更新的图像环境中展示了我们最新的空间。