Augmented reality navigation system for human traversal of rough terrain
Name
1227276835-MIT.pdf
Size
3.19 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
708a8cac4efc1f9c4579024bbfbca88b
Author(s)
Anastas, Nicholas J.(Nicholas Joseph)
Advisor(s)
Jeffrey A. Hoffman.
Date Issued
2020
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
At some point in the near future, astronauts will resume the decades dormant practice of planetary EVA. Because of the resource scarcity of extra-terrestrial environments, finding and following efficient paths during EVA will be essential to mission success. MIT's Surface Exploration Traverse Analysis and Navigational Tool (SEXTANT) was created specifically to satisfy this path efficiency need. Prior to this work, SEXTANT was used exclusively during the planning phase of a mission. Results from several field studies found that SEXTANT's path planning capabilites could be useful during the execution phase of a mission as well; information gathered during a traverse would sometimes necessitate that an existing path be recalculated. Because of its long algorithm runtime and stateless nature, however, the previous implementation of SEXTANT was unable to support this capability. This work details the software optimizations and architectural modifications made to SEXTANT in order to accommodate real-time, mid-traverse path recalculations based on terrain information updates supplied by a user. Additionally, this work discusses the creation of Pathfinder: an augmented reality tool that interfaces with SEXTANT to provide path following, terrain modification, and path recalculation capabilities. Pathfinder implements three different path visualizations, each of which is evaluated on how it affects traverse performance. Furthermore, Pathfinder implements two different interfaces that allow users to modify terrain information and to recalculate existings paths based on those modifications. These interfaces are compared and used to evaluate the effect mid-traverse path recalculation has on traverse performance.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, September, 2020
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 108-112).
Subjects
Aeronautics and Astronautics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
Persistent DSpace Link
