Students

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Tele-Operation and Vision System for Moon
Exploration

• Students
• Aaron Roney, Albert Soto, Brian Kuehner, David
  Taylor, Mark Hibbeler, Nicholas Logan, Stephanie
  Herd

Project Mentor Dr. Giovanni Giardini
Project Advisor Prof. Tamás Kalmár-Nagy
NASA JSC Mentors Dr. Bob Savely Mike Goza
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Project Members
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Motivations

• Lunar surface exploration
• Human perspective
• In safety
• With low risk
• 3D environment reconstruction
• Self location with artificial vision system

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Objectives
Tele-Operation System with Visual Feedback

• Vision System
• Ego-Motion estimation
• Environment reconstruction

• Tele-Operation System
• Remote Vehicle Control

• Hardware and Mechanical
• Implementation

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Theory

• It is impossible to compute the 3D coordinates of
  an object with a single image
• Solution Stereo Cameras
• Disparity computation
• 3D reconstruction

Image
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Environment Reconstruction

• Main Goal digital environment 3D reconstruction
• Object detection (i.e. obstacles)
• High level planning
• Self localization
• Use Stereo Cameras to generate
• 3D environment

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Environment Reconstruction

• Disparity map computation
• Given 2 images, it is a collection of pixel
  disparities
• Point distances can be calculated from
  disparities
• Environment can be reconstructed from disparity
  map

Left Image
Right Image
Disparity Map
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Ego-Motion Estimation

• Main goal evaluate the motion (translation and
  rotation) of the vehicle from sequences of images

Optical Flow Example

• Optical Flow is related to vehicle movement
  through the

Perspective Projection Equation

• Solving will give velocities of the vehicle

• Least Square solution

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Ego-Motion Example
Optical Flow Left Image
Optical Flow Right Image
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Calibration and Filtering

• Calibration removes image distortion

• Filtering Process
• Improves image quality
• Increases the robustness of the vision system

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Tele-Operations
Laptop on TAMUBOT
Picture PC
Tropos Router
Control PC
TAMUBOT Control System
Wireless Router
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Vehicle
Vehicle Courtesy of Prof. Dezhen Song

• Camera support system
• 3-DOF mechanical neck
• Panoramic rotation
• Tilt rotation
• Telescopic capability

• Controlled height and baseline length

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Conclusions andFuture Work

• Demonstrated
• Ego-motion estimation
• Environment Reconstruction
• Vehicle control and movement
• Future Developments
• System integration
• Filtering and improving results

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Acknowledgements

• Thanks to
• Prof. Tamás Kalmár-Nagy
• Dr. Giovanni Giardini
• Prof. Dezhen Song
• Change Young Kim
• Magda Lagoudas
• Tarek Elgohary
• Pedro Davalos