Illustration of the Mars Perseverance Rover the usage of its SuperCam instrument to laser zap a rock in uncover to envision what it’s made of. Credit: NASA
NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover has a large selection of appealing parts, at the side of the robotic arm, drill, mast, instrument covers, excessive operate antenna, and mobility draw. An unintended collision with the rover body or Martian surface at some stage in circulate might per chance maybe well reason damage that can’t be repaired. In addition, the SuperCam instrument shoots the LIBS laser at the outside to operate a plasma and produce spectroscopy, and we also desire to terminate the laser from zapping any section of the rover.
To keep away from this, Perseverance assessments upcoming strikes and laser firing the usage of its Rover Collision Model flight tool and autonomously stops any activity sooner than a collision might per chance maybe well happen. To produce robotic arm collision assessments Perseverance tasks the next arm transfer into the future and assessments if at any level in that transfer it would collide with the rover body. If the predicted transfer has no surprising collisions, it lets in commencing circulate. At times the arm does enjoy to get very shut to hardware or even contact other parts of the rover body, much like at some stage in docking to switch drill bits or cache sample. The rover is aware of when the contacts are intentional and lets in them to happen. When Perseverance autonomously selects science targets onboard the usage of AEGIS, it uses the Rover Collision Model to filter out any targets that will result in collisions sooner than deciding on a purpose for SuperCam targeting.
Mars Perseverance Sol 374 – Front Appropriate Hazard Avoidance Digicam: NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover received this image of the utter in front of it the usage of its onboard Front Appropriate Hazard Avoidance Digicam A. This image used to be received on March 10, 2022 (Sol 374). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Generally the operations team sends commands to the rover as soon as a sol and Perseverance needs to present protection to itself if just a few of those activities don’t dart as deliberate. If the drill were to bump into even a minor fault, as occurred on Sol 374, the robotic arm might per chance maybe well mute be in front of the rover, touching the purpose. The deliberate LIBS firing in a continuation of the identical notion the next morning used to be pointed to zap a rock that used to be now blocked by the arm. This used to be gracefully averted as intended by the Rover Collision Model on Sol 375.
Collision checking autonomously occurs onboard, and the operations team does no longer on the total produce any speak commanding. Until a transfer fails a collision take a look at at some stage in ground simulation and needs to be adjusted, the operations team might per chance maybe presumably also no longer even peep it. Rover Collision Model used to be if truth be told one of the significant flight tool modules I designed and programmed, so I will’t support however divulge what it’s doing in the background. As of sol 460, it has conducted over 64,000 collision assessments on Mars without error, reporting collisions the set expected.
We’ve arrived at Hogwallow Residences. I’m having a take a seat up for seeing the rover take a look at for many extra collisions and zaps because it performs some thrilling science investigation.
Written by Vandi Verma, Chief Engineer for Robotic Operations at NASA/JPL.