VIPER: Virtual Intelligent Planetary Exploration Rover
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Proceeding of the 6th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics & Automation in Space: i-SAIRAS 2001, Canadian Space Agency, St-Hubert, Quebec, Canada, June 18-22, 2001. VIPER: Virtual Intelligent Planetary Exploration Rover Laurence Edwards Lorenzo Fl¨uckiger∗ Laurent Nguyen† Richard Washington‡ Autonomy and Robotics Area, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 { edwards | lorenzo | nguyen | richw } @artemis.arc.nasa.gov Keywords: Simulation, 3D visualization, plan ex- your vehicle works. This is the world of scientist- ecution, planetary rovers. directed planetary rover exploration. Planetary rovers are scientific tools for exploring Abstract an unknown world. One focus of the Autonomy and Simulation and visualization of rover be- Robotics Area (ARA) at the NASA Ames Research havior are critical capabilities for scientists Center is to design and develop the tools and tech- and rover operators to construct, test, and niques that allow scientists to control a rover effi- validate plans for commanding a remote ciently and effectively. This presents challenges both rover. The VIPER system links these capa- in the user interface and in the underlying rover con- bilities, using a high-fidelity virtual-reality trol methods. (VR) environment, a kinematically accu- One important element of the planetary rover con- rate simulator, and a flexible plan execu- trol is the ability to simulate and visualize possible tive to allow users to simulate and visualize execution outcomes of a plan under development. possible execution outcomes of a plan under We have developed the VIPER system, which links development. plan execution, rover simulation, and a high-fidelity, This work is part of a larger vision of a realistic virtual-reality (VR) environment. This sys- science-centered rover control environment, tem is one part of a larger architectural design under where a scientist may inspect and explore development that includes tools for science goal spec- the environment via VR tools, specify sci- ification and plan generation. ence goals, and visualize the expected and The ultimate vision for the overall architecture is actual behavior of the remote rover. that scientists at “mission control,” and potentially elsewhere in the world, will both specify and ob- The VIPER system is constructed from serve the rover’s operation as well as science prod- three generic systems, linked together via a ucts through the VR environment. The scientists can minimal amount of customization into the examine physical features of the environment (dis- integrated system. The complete system tance, volume, cross-sections) and specify science- points out the power of combining plan ex- level goals, for example to go to a rock and drill a ecution, simulation, and visualization for small sample. These goals are then interactively re- envisioning rover behavior; it also demon- fined at mission control with the help of a planning strates the utility of developing generic and scheduling system, adding constraints of rover technologies, which can be combined in motion, resources, and time to arrive at a final plan. novel and useful ways. Once the plan is ready, it is communicated to the rover. 1 Introduction On board the rover, the plan is executed by testing and monitoring conditions on time, resources, and Imagine trying to drive when your vehicle only does rover and environmental state. The same plan ex- approximately what you command, you only catch ecuted multiple times may produce many different occasional glimpse of your environment, 20 minutes behaviors, based on the initial conditions and the pass between your command and the vehicle’s re- variability of the rover’s interactions with the envi- sponse, and to top it off, you don’t really know how ronment. ∗NASA contractor with QSS. The VIPER system allows users to simulate and †Author’s current address is LightLogic, Inc., 8674 visualize possible execution outcomes of a plan un- Thornton Avenue, Newark, CA 94560. der development. We have developed a kinematically ‡NASA contractor with RIACS. accurate simulator of the rover that allows the sci- entists and rover engineers to understand more con- cretely the effects of plan actions. The plan execu- tion system commands the simulator, which in turn controls a model of the rover within the VR environ- ment. This provides an immediate connection be- tween the plan and the resulting execution behavior. Each of the technologies was developed as a generic system in a separate context from this system; the resulting system was then assembled quickly with rel- atively minor specializations. This paper offers two contributions. It highlights the power of combining plan execution, simulation, and visualization for the problem of rover control. It also demonstrates the advantages of using generic technologies for rapid development of useful systems. In the remainder of the paper, we will describe the overall system history and organization, followed by a more detailed description of each component. We Figure 1: VEVI interface controlling the Marsokhod will then present an example to illustrate the op- rover. eration of the system. Finally, we will discuss the ongoing work to extend the system. signed to be a flexible re-configurable VR user inter- 2 System Background and Overview face for robotic mechanisms. Application specific in- terfaces could be developed by implementing a com- The VIPER system is a science-oriented rover con- munications layer utilizing the provided I/O mod- trol system that comprises three technologies: plan ules and specifying the geometry and kinematics of execution, simulation, and visualization. In this sec- a particular mechanism in a configuration file. VEVI tion we describe the background of the individual was used in a number of projects and tests of mobile technologies, then describe the organization of the robots. The robots controlled with VEVI include VIPER system. the 8-legged “Dante II” walking robot [Bares and Wettergreen, 1999] and the 6-wheeled “Marsokhod” Virtual Reality Interfaces Our design for a robot [Christian et al., 1997]. Figure 1 shows the rover-control architecture is built around the premise Marsokhod rover being controlled in the VEVI in- that a scientist should be able to specify science goals terface. VEVI was used in two modes: 1) robot and to control rover activities with little or no assis- telemetry was used to directly drive the state of the tance from rover engineers and technologists. This VR environment, and 2) robot operations were first goal of a science-oriented system stems from a line planned offline by simulation in VEVI and then ex- of robotic tele-operation research begun in the early ecuted. The second mode was found to be more ef- ’90s at NASA Ames exploring the use of Virtual Re- fective due to sensor noise and inaccuracy. ality (VR) user interfaces for the control of robotic In addition to the difficulties cited above, control mechanisms. The visualization technology also de- of robots operating on other planets adds significant rives from this line of work. communication delays. In this situation the ability The development of VR user interfaces for robotic to plan the offline in the highest fidelity becomes crit- control was motivated by the difficulty of operating ical. Scientists involved in the mission are typically complex high degree of freedom mechanisms in un- not highly trained operators, and tools must be pro- known, remote, hazardous environments. In the ab- vided that allow them to plan science activities and sence of a robust fully autonomous capability, the analyze data in an intuitive and simple manner. To ability of human operators to understand quickly and achieve this, NASA Ames developed a VR user in- accurately a mechanism’s relationship to its environ- terface called “MarsMap” [Stoker et al., 1998] and ment becomes pivotal. It was hypothesized that high a high-fidelity 3D-from-stereo terrain reconstruction fidelity, interactive, 3D (i.e., VR) representations of capability, the “stereo-pipeline.” MarsMap was de- a robot and its environment would effectively lever- veloped for the Mars Pathfinder mission and pro- age the human visual system to maximize the band- vided planetary scientists with a suite of simple in- width of human-machine communication, and pro- tuitive tools to plan image acquisition sequences and vide operators with immediate visceral situational interrogate stereo-pipeline generated terrain models. understanding. The MarsMap environment was highly interactive The first operational system resulting from this re- and immersive, providing enhanced situational un- search thrust was the Virtual Environment Vehicle derstanding. Interface (VEVI) [Piguet et al., 1995].VEVIwasde- The Viz system used in this work is a succes- Page 2 CRL Plan Body Joints Wheels Visualization Server Constraints Terrain (VIZ) Kinematic Simulator (VirtualRobot) Conditional Executive Real Rover Figure 2: Overview of VIPER plan execution, simulation and visualization. sor to MarsMap, initially deployed during the Mars ever, attempt to reproduce all of the capabilities of Polar Lander mission [Nguyen et al., 2001].Viz the RA; in particular, multiple concurrent activities, implements an architecture that allows a flexibility model-based state reconfiguration, and run-time re- and customizability similar in spirit to VEVI and source selection for state variables are not currently presents the user with a highly interactive immer- included in our executive. sive environment as in MarsMap. VIPER