GUIDANCE AND CONTROL OF A PLANETARY EXPLORATION ROVER VIA NUMERICAL NAVIGATION FUNCTIONS AND BACKSTEPPING

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to present a path-planning and control framework for a planetary exploration rover in a constrained environment. The extraterrestrial environment is considered constrained by the presence of obstacles such as rocks, or steep craters creating restricted regions in its operating space which are to be avoided. The results presented will come in two parts. First, collision-free paths are obtained through the implementation of a path-planner that makes use of a special class of numerical artificial potential functions called navigation functions. Then, for simulation results, a backstepping based controller is implemented to follow trajectories produced by the navigation function path-planner.