Long Range Navigation Capabilities for Autonomous Mobile Manipulation

The need for fully and semi-autonomous Lunar Terrain Vehicles (LTV) and Pressurized Rovers (PR) is paramount to establishing a long-term lunar presence. This proposal addresses the critical requirement for innovative autonomous mobile manipulation systems capable of operating in the challenging conditions of the lunar surface, specifically focusing on long-range navigation capabilities. PickNik proposes adding new capabilities to our software platform, MoveIt Pro, that enable the execution of complex mobile manipulation tasks that create a high degree of operator confidence, trust in the system, and that are indicative of a robust and technologically sophisticated solution, all available via a ground control operator interface. We will do this by focusing on two primary goals. First, to develop behavior trees incorporating long distance robot navigation behaviors from Nav2 with MoveIt Pro-based manipulation behaviors. Second, we propose to augment MoveIt Pro's operator frontend to provide similar situational awareness and sliding autonomy capabilities for rover control as are already available for arm control. PickNik’s MoveIt product line targets robotics applications that use robot arms for manipulation in many vertical markets. Our technology 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.