Robotic Exploration of Planetary Subsurface Voids in Search for Life

In the past two decades, subsurface voids (SSV) exploration technologies have matured enough for serious consideration as part of future space robotic missions. These advances have been expedited by synergistic collaborations with the rising commercial space sector, traditional mining companies, and other government agencies. Most prominently, DARPA has recently started a huge program to develop technologies to explore caves and other subterranean environments. NASA's team (TEAM CoSTAR: Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots) has been selected to participate in this competition. CoSTAR has been developing various technologies to explore and access terrestrial caves and planetary subsurface voids — with a dual focus on the search for signs of extinct and extant life, and resource characterization and acquisition. Our system's key advantages are mobility, perception, autonomy and communication: (i) Mobility: Negotiating and moving over largely unknown and potentially rugged terrains, narrow passages, and vertical shafts is a critical capability to access SSVs, as orbiters are unable to provide a priori information about the terrain in SSVs. Advances in modular and shapeshifting mobility systems that can morph into various locomotion modes to negotiate a wide range of terrains and obstacles is a promising solution to address these challenges. (ii) Perception and situational awareness in SSVs: The recent development in GPS-denied navigation in underground environments and 3D mapping of the environment has enabled fully autonomous motion of robots in SSVs for 100s of meters. (iii) Autonomy: Autonomous multi-robot coordination and navigation allows the robot network reconfigure itself to various formations based on the science objective in hand is a valuable capability in SSV exploration. (iv) Communication: Effective mobile-robot autonomy in self-governing exploration requires reliable communication methods for ensuring information delivery. In this presentation, we will go over several classes of technologies that will help expediting and enabling future subsurface missions on Mars in the search for potentially habitable subsurface environments.