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How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#21

Post by manicdee »

retSava wrote: post #8

So many interesting details in this article. Snapdragon 801-based hw running Linux, sensor fusion from three sensors whereof some bought COTS from sparkfun (who make breakout boards for sensors, basically the sensor datasheet recommended design). 3 flights planned, but potentially more which will be planned after the three first. 30 day lifetime window, due to dependecy on the rover, which needs to conserve resources…

Veritasium did an episode 'Mars Helicopter' containing some interesting discussions with the team that built it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM

nm it was already linked elsewhere

Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#23

Post by arethuza »

inetstarrrrrr wrote: post #3

What's the point of flying a helicopter on Mars? What scientifically relevant data do you get? Its fun and cool but why?

Perhaps we could eventually get things like a video of a drone flying over the 4km high cliffs of Echus Chasma:

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080723.html

There is a whole new world out there!

Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#24

Post by SubMachineGhost »

protoman3000 wrote: post #10

Unfortunately the article does not talk about how this helicopter would fare in a sandstorm. Are the winds strong enough to tip it over?

Mars has 1% of earth's atmosphere, so it will not affect the vehicle, The answer comes from an interview with the engineers here : https://youtu.be/GhsZUZmJvaM?t=534

Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#25

Post by pridkett »

londons_explore wrote: post #15

Seems shortsighted to end this mission after 30 days. I imagine it's purely for mission planning complexity reasons. But a more sensible approach seems to be to say "after 30 days you have to limit comms to 100 bytes/sec back to earth and stay 100 meters from the rover". In the future I could imagine the more modern processor on the helicopter might become handy... Some neural network based navigation system might ru…

> Seems shortsighted to end this mission after 30 days.

At this point, NASA is getting rather famous for this. Opportunity had a 90 day mission that survived for nearly fifteen years. Curiosity, a much bigger and more complicated machine, is still doing science 8.5 years later.

Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#26

Post by BelenusMordred »

retSava wrote: post #8

So many interesting details in this article. Snapdragon 801-based hw running Linux, sensor fusion from three sensors whereof some bought COTS from sparkfun (who make breakout boards for sensors, basically the sensor datasheet recommended design). 3 flights planned, but potentially more which will be planned after the three first. 30 day lifetime window, due to dependecy on the rover, which needs to conserve resources…

I went down this rabbithole not long ago with the rovers on-board computer. The writeup from the people who designed the system was really approachable for someone without any aerospace experience. There's a lot of challenges and tradeoffs involved.

Some takeaways:

> Constrained CPU: 133MHz PowerPC, 128MB RAM, 4GB storage

> Software written in C, OS is VxWorks

> Only get contact a few times a day, rover must be charged and ready each time regardless of uncompleted tasks. Scheduling is hard.

> Some tasks require parts preheated for X time, which depends on ambient temp, they use a lookup table for the time of day instead of measuring the temp directly. (Assume this is for reliability purposes)

> High level activities are constructed in a GUI by the operations team, low-level tasks are written in XML, both are uploaded to the rover as a binary plan file.

It's a good read, do recommend it.

https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/documents/papers/rabideau_iwp...

Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#27

Post by pengaru »

inetstarrrrrr wrote: post #3

What's the point of flying a helicopter on Mars? What scientifically relevant data do you get? Its fun and cool but why?

I find it hard to believe you genuinely asked yourself this question and came up empty before posting this vacuous comment.

Re: How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars

#28

Post by gbrown »

zeristor wrote: post #19

One thing that I have been wondering, if the atmosphere is so thin, then how does the RTG cool? I seem to have nerd-sniped myself. It needs a temperature differential to generate electric current and it looks to have fins for convective cooling but the atmospheric pressure is a few % of that of sea level Earth.

I believe the fins are primarily radiators. Conduction, convection, radiation.
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