NASA Perseverance Rover’s Self-Driving Capabilities Put to the Test in Rush to Martian Delta

NASA Perseverance Mars Rover Wheel Tracks

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover looks back at its wheel tracks on March 17, 2022, the 381st Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The rover’s self-driving capabilities will be put to the test this month as it begins a record-breaking series of sprints to its next sampling location.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is trying to cover more distance in a single month than any rover before it – and it’s doing so using artificial intelligence. On the path ahead are sandpits, craters, and fields of sharp rocks that the rover will have to navigate around on its own. At the end of the 3-mile (5-kilometer) journey, which began March 14, 2022, Perseverance will reach an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater, where a lake existed billions of years ago.

This delta is one of the best locations on Mars for the rover to look for signs of past microscopic life. Using a drill on the end of its robotic arm and a complex sample collection system in its belly, Perseverance is collecting rock cores for return to Earth – the first part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

“The delta is so important that we’ve actually decided to minimize science activities and focus on driving to get there more quickly,” said Ken Farley of Caltech, Perseverance’s project scientist. “We’ll be taking lots of images of the delta during that drive. The closer we get, the more impressive those images will be.”

Perseverance Mars Rover Route to Jezero Crater Delta

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will follow the proposed route to Jezero Crater’s delta shown in this animation. The delta is one of the most important locations the rover will visit as it seeks signs of ancient life on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/University of Arizona

The science team will be searching these images for the rocks they’ll eventually want to study in closer detail using the instruments on Perseverance’s arm. They’ll also hunt for the best routes the rover can take to ascend the 130-foot-high (40-meter-high) delta.

But first, Perseverance needs to get there. The rover will do this by relying on its self-driving AutoNav system, which has already set impressive distance records. While all of NASA’s Mars rovers have had self-driving abilities, Perseverance has the most advanced one yet.

“Self-driving processes that took minutes on a rover like Opportunity happen in less than a second on Perseverance,” said veteran rover planner and flight software developer Mark Maimone of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. “Because autonomous driving is now faster, we can cover more ground than if humans programmed every drive.”

How Rover Planning Works

Before the rover rolls, a team of mobility planning experts (Perseverance has 14 who trade off shifts) writes the driving commands the robotic explorer will carry out. The commands reach Mars via NASA’s Deep Space Network, and Perseverance sends back data so the planners can confirm the rover’s progress. Multiple days are required to complete some plans, as with a recent drive that spanned about 1,673 feet (510 meters) and included thousands of individual rover commands.

Some drives require more human input than others. AutoNav is useful for drives over flat terrain with simple potential hazards – for instance, large rocks and slopes – that are easy for the rover to detect and work around.

Thinking While Driving

AutoNav reflects an evolution of self-driving tools previously developed for NASA’s Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers. What’s different for AutoNav is “thinking while driving” – allowing Perseverance to take and process images while on the move. The rover then navigates based on those images. Is that boulder too close? Will its belly be able to clear that rock? What if the rover wheels were to slip?

Upgraded hardware allows “thinking while driving” to happen. Faster cameras mean Perseverance can take images quickly enough to process its route in real-time. And unlike its predecessors, Perseverance has an additional computer dedicated entirely to image processing. The computer relies on a single-purpose, super-efficient microchip called a field-programmable gate array that is great for computer vision processing.

“On past rovers, autonomy meant slowing down because data had to be processed on a single computer,” Maimone said. “This extra computer is insanely fast compared to what we had in the past, and having it dedicated for driving means you don’t have to share computing resources with over 100 other tasks.”

Of course, humans aren’t completely out of the picture during AutoNav drives. They still plan the basic route using images taken from space by missions like NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Then, they mark obstacles such as potential sand traps for Perseverance to avoid, drawing “keep out” and “keep in” zones that help it navigate.

Another big difference is Perseverance’s sense of space.

Curiosity’s autonomous navigation program keeps the rover in a safety bubble that is 16 feet (5 meters) wide. If Curiosity spots two rocks that are, say, 15 feet (4.5 meters) apart – a gap it could easily navigate – it will still stop or travel around them rather than risk passing through.

But Perseverance’s bubble is much smaller: A virtual box is centered on each of the rover’s six wheels. Mars’ newest rover has a more sensitive understanding of the terrain and can get around boulders on its own.

“When we first looked at Jezero Crater as a landing site, we were concerned about the dense fields of rocks we saw scattered across the crater floor,” Maimone said. “Now we’re able to skirt or even straddle rocks that we couldn’t have approached before.”

While previous rover missions took a slower pace exploring along their path, AutoNav provides the science team with the ability to zip to the locations they prioritize the most. That means the mission is more focused on its primary objective: finding the samples that scientists will eventually want to return to Earth.

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

7 Comments on "NASA Perseverance Rover’s Self-Driving Capabilities Put to the Test in Rush to Martian Delta"

  1. Interesting.
    1. Persevere Perseverence.
    2. Looks like levitation has not been explored to get from Point A to Point B.
    3. Earth Example exists in Japan. Entire Trains levitate above the magnetized rails. Achieve high speeds on Earth.
    4. Gravity on Mars is obly ` 0.375 of Earth.
    5. As distances involved are snall, future Rovers can be equipped to magnetize to repel/ attract Rover from the surface of the Mars , to take advantage of frictionless traavel.

    Views expressed are personal and not bniding on anyone,

    • Torbjörn Larsson | March 20, 2022 at 6:54 am | Reply

      By definition wheeled rovers use wheels. The accompanying Inspiration helicopter use propeller “levitation”.

      The technology you talk about, which isn’t used in commercial traffic, needs magnet tracks.

  2. A year on mars and still f*@king off. Good job milking the Mars cow NASA.

    • Torbjörn Larsson | March 20, 2022 at 6:58 am | Reply

      They have indeed milked that science “cow” with some amazing finds during the first year. Scientists are very pleased, as are the sponsoring organizations.

      But I guess you know that and are wasting and money time trolling innocent science sites.

  3. Babu G. Ranganathan | March 20, 2022 at 8:05 am | Reply

    Babu G. Ranganathan*
    (B.A. Bible/Biology)

    POSSIBLY MILLIONS OF TONS OF VOLCANIC EARTH SOIL REACHED MARS (Newsweek)

    A Newsweek article of September 21, 1998, p.12 mentions the high possibility of Earth life on Mars because of millions of tons of Earth soil ejected into space from ancient volcanic explosions. “We think there’s about 7 million tons of earth soil sitting on Mars”, says USC scientist Kenneth Nealson. “You have to consider the possibility that if we find life on Mars, it could have come from the Earth” [Weingarten, T., Newsweek, September 21, 1998, p.12]. This may also explain why life forms may exist on Venus, again because they originated from Earth.

    In the Earth’s past there was powerful volcanic activity which could have easily spewed dirt and rocks containing microbes and life into outer space which not only could have eventually reached Mars but also ended up traveling in orbit through space that we now know as meteors, comets, and asteroids. This would mean life forms found in meteorites originated from Earth in the first place.

    Secular scientists have a different explanation from creationist scientists on the volcanic eruptions of the Earth’s past. Creation scientists believe, as Genesis teaches, that as the fountains of the deep were opened to release water for the world-wide flood the force of the eruptions could have indeed spewed great amounts of earth soil into space.

    Life could not have evolved. A partially evolved cell would quickly disintegrate under the effects of random forces of the environment, especially without the protection of a complete and fully functioning cell membrane. A partially evolved cell cannot wait millions of years for chance to make it complete and living! In fact, it couldn’t have even reached the partially evolved state.

    Having the right conditions and raw material for life do not mean that life can originate or arise by chance. Stanley Miller, in his famous experiment in 1953, showed that individual amino acids (the building blocks of life) could come into existence by chance. But, it’s not enough just to have amino acids. The various amino acids that make-up life must link together in a precise sequence, just like the letters in a sentence, to form functioning protein molecules. If they’re not in the right sequence the protein molecules won’t work. It has never been shown that various amino acids can bind together into a sequence by chance to form protein molecules. Even the simplest cell is made up of many millions of various protein molecules.

    The probability of just an average size protein molecule arising by chance is 10 to the 65th power. Mathematicians have said any event in the universe with odds of 10 to 50th power or greater is impossible! The late great British scientist Sir Frederick Hoyle calculated that the odds of even the simplest cell coming into existence by chance is 10 to the 40,000th power! How large is this? Consider that the total number of atoms in our universe is 10 to the 82nd power.
    Also, what many don’t realize is that Miller had a laboratory apparatus that shielded and protected the individual amino acids the moment they were formed, otherwise the amino acids would have quickly disintegrated and been destroyed in the mix of random energy and forces involved in Miller’s experiment.

    Miller’s experiment produced equally both left-handed and right-handed amino acids, but all living things strictly require only left-handed amino acids. If a right-handed amino acid gets into the chain the protein won’t work.

    There is no innate chemical tendency for the various amino acids to bond with one another in a sequence. Any one amino acid can just as easily bond with any other. The only reason at all for why the various amino acids bond with one another in a precise sequence in the cells of our bodies is because they’re directed to do so by an already existing sequence of molecules found in our genetic code.

    Of course, once you have a complete and living cell then the genetic code and biological machinery exist to direct the formation of more cells, but how could life or the cell have naturally originated when no directing code and mechanisms existed in nature? Read my Internet article: HOW FORENSIC SCIENCE REFUTES ATHEISM.

    Visit my newest Internet site: THE SCIENCE SUPPORTING CREATION

    Author of popular Internet article, TRADITIONAL DOCTRINE OF HELL EVOLVED FROM GREEK ROOTS

    * I have had the privilege of being recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis “Who’s Who In The East” for my writings on religion and science, and I have given successful lectures (with question and answer time afterwards) defending creation from science before evolutionist science faculty and students at various colleges and universities.

    • While I do not endorse your notions of impossibility in this context, you certainly do a nice job of highlighting gaps in our knowledge of the origin of complex organic molecules, complex biologic systems, and what we homo sapiens categorize as “life.” Where I differ from you fundamentally is on the interpretations of this gap in knowledge. As a scientific thinker, I see good questions that may well require new discoveries, new technologies, and new insights in order for us to answer in concise scientific language. We have come a long way in defining ourselves and our environment in scientific terms in a very short time. The fact that these gaps in scientific knowledge exist does not imply that they can not have a natural (as opposed to mystical) explanation. For centuries, scientists have been working diligently to shrink gaps in our understanding of ourselves and our physical environment, with some success. Many phenomena that we can now describe in scientific terms were once considered acts of god(s). As a scientist, I am interested in discovering explanations. This is far different from a world view that looks at current gaps in knowledge as absolute proof that mystical teachings are in fact true.

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