Long Range Navigation Capabilities for Autonomous Mobile Manipulation

Autonomous mobile robotics are highly important to lunar surface exploration and development; both to prepare for the arrival of astronauts and as a major enabler of a sustained presence on the surface. Historically, robotic usage necessitated teleoperation or more localized command and control. While this may have been useful for early applications, the Cislunar communication presents unique challenges - low data bandwidth, communications latency, and communications dropout. This motivates a more autonomous approach to enable robots to reliably perform more sophisticated and mission critical tasks. In Phase I we integrated an established navigation framework into our robotic runtime engine and developer platform, MoveIt Pro. We successfully utilized navigation algorithms developed for terrestrial applications to perform semi-autonomous robotic navigation tasks in simulation. We will build upon this work in Phase II to develop our own advanced navigation algorithms that go beyond terrestrial needs and meet the unique challenges of the lunar environment. Through this Phase II we will expand MoveIt Pro to include a tested and validated algorithm suite capable of supporting real-time navigation on low-power compute devices, with broad applicability to future lunar and planetary exploration missions. PickNik’s MoveIt product line is multi-use and has had extensive deployments for terrestrial markets such as oil & gas, warehouse logistics, agriculture, healthcare, food preparation, construction, and advanced manufacturing. In the space industry, we are targeting various applications of robot arms and mobile manipulators from Intra Vehicular Robotics (IVR) needs, to In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) applications.