Artificial Target Location on Mars Exploration

A new location method is proposed to locate the artificial targets on curiosity rover. Firstly, considering the influence of dust particles and non-uniform illumination on Mars, median filtering and adaptive thresholding image segmentation based on integral image are used for edge detection. Then, a two-step location method is proposed to recognize and locate these artificial targets: least square ellipse fitting is used for preliminary location and Hough transform is used for precise location. Experiments are carried out based on artificial target images of curiosity rover, which indicate that the method proposed can be used on the targets with largely deformation, and the location accuracy is within 1 pixel. The method is robust to the dust adhesion, and illumination and shadows effect. It can satisfy the Mars exploration system requirements of resolution and robustness.