Planetary Rovers [recurso electrónico] : Robotic Exploration of the Solar System / by Alex Ellery.

Introduction -- Planetary environments -- Survey of past rover missions -- Rover mobility and locomotion -- Rover sensorimotor control systems -- Rover vision?fundamentals -- Rover vision?advanced capabilities -- Autonomous navigation?behaviors and architectures -- Autonomous navigation?self-localization and mapping (SLAM) -- Rover path planning -- Robotic sample acquisition -- Onboard autonomous science -- Case study: Robotic exploration of Europa -- Future rover concepts.

The increasing adoption of terrain mobility ? planetary rovers ? for the investigation of planetary surfaces emphasises their central importance in space exploration. This imposes a completely new set of technologies and methodologies to the design of such spacecraft ? and planetary rovers are indeed, first and foremost, spacecraft. This introduces vehicle engineering, mechatronics, robotics, artificial intelligence and associated technologies to the spacecraft engineer´s repertoire of skills. Planetary Rovers is the only book that comprehensively covers these aspects of planetary rover engineering and more. The book: ? discusses relevant planetary environments to rover missions, stressing the Moon and Mars; ? includes a brief survey of previous rover missions; ? covers rover mobility, traction and control systems; ? stresses the importance of robotic vision in rovers for both navigation and science; ? comprehensively covers autonomous navigation, path planning and multi-rover formations on other planets; ? introduces sample acquisition and autonomous science ? with an emphasis on astrobiology ? as the raison d?être of rover missions; ? presents a special case study on the exploration of Europa; ? discusses future rover concepts, including a brief exploration of the role of biomimetics.