Adaptive LIDAR Vision System for Advanced Robotics

Advanced robotic systems demand an enhanced vision system and image processing algorithms to reduce the percentage of manual operation required. Unstructured environments, whether man-mad (e.g., International Space Station) or natural (e.g., Mars), present significant challenges to supervised autonomy or fully autonomous systems – advanced perception sensors and associated software are required. This will be particularly important both for future long duration exploration missions where the transmit (Tx) / receive (Rx) delay will be substantial and a high degree of autonomy will be required to maximize science gain, as well as for telerobotic systems where a human operator is IVA and advanced operations in a short timeline are desired. No solution currently exists for small robotic platforms. Honeybee Robotics proposes to develop a compact, wide-angle, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system that is able to detect dynamic changes in the field of view (FOV) and focus the laser scan pattern centered on the area of interest while maintaining a lower-resolution fixed FOV for robotic path planning, navigation, inspection, and identification tasks.