Autonomous Hazard Detection and Avoidance

by National Aeronautics and Space Administration

During GFY 91, Draper Laboratory was awarded a task by NASA-JSC under contract number NAS9-18426 to study and evaluate the potential for achieving safe autonomous landings on Mars using an on-board autonomous hazard detection and avoidance (AHDA) system. This report describes the results of that study. The AHDA task had four objectives: to demonstrate, via a closed-loop simulation, the ability to autonomously select safe landing sites and the ability to maneuver to the selected site; to identify key issues in the development of AHDA systems; to produce strawman designs for AHDA sensors and algorithms; and to perform initial trade studies leading to better understanding of the effect of sensor/terrain/viewing parameters on AHDA algorithm performance. This report summarizes the progress made during the first year, with primary emphasis on describing the tools developed for simulating a closed-loop AHDA landing. Some cursory performance evaluation results are also presented. Pien, Homer Unspecified Center...

54 pages, Paperback

Published July 8, 2018

About the author

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.