Development of autonomous rover for asteroid surface exploration

Author

Yoshimitsu, Tetsuo

Author_Institution

Inst. of Space & Astron. Sci., Kanagawa, Japan

Volume

3

fYear

2004

fDate

26 April-1 May 2004

Firstpage

2529

Abstract

Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in Japan has launched the engineering test spacecraft "HAYABUSA" on May 9, 2003 for the asteroid "ITOKAWA". HAYABUSA includes a very tiny rover named "MINERVA." MINERVA is the world-ever rover, which would move over an asteroid surface. The mission objectives of the rover are: (1) the establishment of the mobile system on the micro-gravity environment of small planetary bodies, and (2) the demonstration of fully autonomous exploration. This paper describes the design of the rover, especially focused on the two major objectives of MINERVA mission: the mobile system and the autonomous capabilities.

Keywords

aerospace robotics; asteroids; mobile robots; planetary rovers; planetary surfaces; space vehicles; asteroid surface exploration; autonomous exploration; autonomous rover; engineering test spacecraft; microgravity environment; planetary bodies; Aerospace engineering; Earth; Geoscience; Gravity; Instruction sets; Orbital robotics; Remotely operated vehicles; Solar system; Space vehicles; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004 IEEE International Conference on

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8232-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBOT.2004.1307442

Filename

1307442