Using Simulation to Evaluate Scientific Impact of Autonomous Robotic Capabilities for Mars

The Science Operations On Planetary Surfaces (SOOPS) task was created with the goal of evaluating, developing and validating methods for increasing the productivity of science operations on planetary surfaces. The highly integrated spacecraft-instrument payload systems of planetary surface missions create operational constraints (e.g. power, data volume, number of ground control interactions) that can reduce the effective science capabilities. Technological solutions have been proposed to mitigate the impact of those constraints on science return. For example, enhanced mobility autonomy, robotic arm autonomous deployment, and on- board image analysis have been implemented on the Mars Exploration Rovers. Next generation improvements involve on-board science driven decision-making and data collection. SOOPS takes a systems level approach to science operations and thus to evaluating and demonstrating the potential benefits of technologies that are already in development at the `component level'. A simulation environment---"Field Test in a Box" or SOOPS-FTB---has been developed with realistic terrains and scientifically pertinent information content. The terrain can be explored with a simulated spacecraft and instruments that are operated using an activity planning software interface which closely resembles that used for actual surface spacecraft missions. The simulation environment provides flexibility and control over experiments that help answer "what if" questions about the performance of proposed autonomous technologies. The experiments also help evaluate operator interaction with the autonomous system, and improve the designs of the control tools. We will report the recent results of SOOPS-FTB experiments with an on-board feature mapping capability, which is effectively an autonomous compression scheme. This example illustrates a demonstration of a new software scheme to operate within a known hardware configuration. It is also conceivable that SOOPS-FTB could be put to use with simulations of new payload configurations to test and evaluate more advanced integrated operations.