HSL Seminar: Alex Forsey-Smerek (2/24, 12-1p, 33-206)

Assessment of Depth Acquisition Methods for Virtual Reality Mission Operations Support Tools

Alex Forsey-Smerek, HSL

 

Abstract: 

The development of in situ resource utilization (ISRU) technologies for future lunar missions requires precursory scientific and prospecting missions to identify and characterize available resources. These missions will employ robotic and human explorers to perform traverses over the lunar surface and collect data to fulfill scientific objectives. The time and monetary resources required to support a mission make maximizing the scientific return of each mission critical. Essential to maximizing scientific return of these missions will be the ability of the Earth-located science team to play a central role in rapid science decision making, between and during traverses. Multi-user naturalistic visualization techniques can be used to analyze, discuss, and interpret near-real-time data with the potential to dramatically improve science support room situation awareness. The virtual reality Mission Simulation System (vMSS), is a virtual reality platform designed at MIT by the Resource Exploration and Science of our Cosmic Environment (RESOURCE) team, which will provide teams with a collaboration interface for planetary exploration missions. As an early step in development of vMSS, various methods of depth data acquisition must be assessed for development of a high-resolution three-dimensional map of the lunar surface, which will serve as a basis of the platform. This talk will begin with the importance of high-resolution depth data for scientific return and the limitations of current planetary mapping tools such as orbital data and Structure-from-Motion Photogrammetry. Motivation and methods will be presented for a field experiment conducted to provide a comparative analysis of four different methods to achieve depth-mapping: stereo cameras, short-range time-of-flight, LiDAR, and 360° 3D VR imagery. The field experiment was conducted using a Boston Dynamics Spot robot, taking advantage of its ability to maneuver in geologically relevant terrain. Initial results will be discussed as well as planned future integration of science analysis tools based on depth imagery into vMSS.