SPARTAN project: On profiling computer vision algorithms for rover navigation

The exploration of Mars is one of the main goals for NASA/ESA, as confirmed by past and recent activities. One of the most challenging tasks for these missions is the autonomous robot´s navigation. Existing approaches incorporate vision-based solutions and exhibit remarkable results in term of accuracy. Unfortunately, these approaches affect mostly computational and memory intensive algorithms running on software-level. In this paper, we introduce a novel methodology for efficient implementation of computer vision algorithms for the SPARTAN project (ExoMars 2018 mission). Experimental results prove the effectiveness of the introduced solution, as compared to a software-based implementation.