Autonomous Science Target Identification and Acquisition (ASTIA) for planetary exploration

We introduce an autonomous planetary exploration software architecture being developed for the purpose of autonomous science target identification and surface sample acquisition. Our motivation is to maximise planetary science data return whilst minimising the need for ground-based human intervention during long duration planetary robotic exploration missions. Our autonomous science target identification and acquisition (ASTIA) architecture incorporates a number of key software components which support 2D and 3D image processing; autonomous science target identification based upon science instrument captured data; a robot manipulator control software agent, and an architecture software executive. ASTIA is being developed and tested within our Trans-National Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab). This provides an analogue Martian terrain, and a rover chassis with onboard manipulator, cameras and computing hardware. Experimentation results with ASTIA and our PATLab rover are presented.