A Software Framework for Advancing Perception Capabilities for Rovers Operating in Harsh Lunar Environments

EasyChair Preprint 13554

Abstract

We present a software framework to model and simulate the perception capabilities of rovers operating in extreme lunar environments, enhancing the test-driven development of rover perception systems. Using the multiphysics engine Project Chrono, this framework integrates high-fidelity terramechanics and sensor simulations to model the mechanical and optical properties of navigation and sensing in lunar environments. Additionally, we present POLAR3D, a pipeline for creating photorealistic synthetic images of lunar environments based on NASA's POLAR stereo dataset.

Keyphrases: Sensor Simulation, rover simulation, terrain mechanics

@booklet{EasyChair:13554,
  author    = {Nevindu Batagoda and Bo-Hsun Chen and Thomas Liang and Harry Zhang and Dan Negrut},
  title     = {A Software Framework for Advancing Perception Capabilities for Rovers Operating in Harsh Lunar Environments},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 13554},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}