Fuzzy reactive piloting for continuous driving of long range autonomous planetary micro-rovers

A complete piloting control subsystem for a highly autonomous long range rover will be defined in order to identify the key control functions needed to achieve continuous driving. This capability can maximize range and number of interesting scientific sites visited during the limited life time of a planetary rover. To achieve continuous driving, a complete set of techniques have been employed: fuzzy based control, real-time artificial intelligence reasoning, fast and robust rover position estimation based on odometry and angular rate sensing, efficient stereo vision elevation maps based on grids, and fast reaction and planning for obstacle detection and obstacle avoidance based on a simple IF-THEN expert system with fuzzy reasoning. To quickly design and implement these techniques, graphical programming has been used to build a fully autonomous piloting system using just the techniques of classic control concepts of cyclic data processing and event driven reaction. Experimental results using the JPL rover Rocky 7 are given in order to validate the mentioned techniques for continuous driving.