RAPID & FASTNAV Projects: High-Speed Semi-Autonomous Rovers Enabling High Return Planetary Missions

Previous Mars and Moon rover missions have highlighted a limitation in mobility, with surface rovers traversing only a few tens of meters per day, at speeds in the order of 10 cm/s. This limitation can be primarily attributed to the rover locomotion system from one side, and on the other by the lack/limited on-board autonomous capabilities.To address these limitations, ESA issued a series of activities on fast autonomous rovers. GMV is leading the RAPID and FASTNAV projects, aiming at developing a semi-autonomous rover capable of safely traversing lunar terrains at high speeds (around 1 m/s), using a visual navigation based Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) system. The RAPID project was the foundation of this work, in which the rover platform was designed, manufactured, and a first version of the on-board software was developed. The follow-up FASTNAV project builds upon the work of RAPID to establish an innovative multi-mode continuous drive GNC system. This new architecture aims to achieve an improved autonomy and faster speeds, with different guidance modes selected according to the terrain type, using a combination of techniques (AI and classical computer vision), while also improving the existing GNC algorithms.This paper shall present the experience obtained during the development of the rover platform and the GNC system across both activities. It shall provide an overview of the challenges and risks, the decisions made, a detailed technical overview of the GNC architecture and components, and the results observed during the analogue field tests.