Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Perseverance rover is driving itself around Mars using auto-navigation system

By
NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover's First Autonav Drive

As the Perseverance rover explores the Jezero crater on Mars, engineers at NASA are trying out a new capability that lets the rover navigate itself around the rocky terrain.

Recommended Videos

Currently, rover drivers like Vandi Verma at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory use 3D glasses to visualize and plan out driving routes. “Jezero is incredible,” Verma said. “It’s a rover driver’s paradise. When you put on the 3D glasses, you see so much more undulation in the terrain. Some days I just stare at the images.”

Vandi Verma, an engineer who now works with NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, is seen here working as a driver for the Curiosity rover. The special 3D glasses she’s wearing are still used by rover drivers to easily detect changes in terrain that the rover may need to avoid.
Vandi Verma, an engineer who now works with NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, is seen here working as a driver for the Curiosity rover. The special 3D glasses she’s wearing are still used by rover drivers to easily detect changes in terrain that the rover may need to avoid. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Now, though, the rover will start navigating by itself more often. The rover has an automated driving system called AutoNav which uses 3D maps of the terrain to plot out a safe route to drive while avoiding obstacles. This means it can plan and execute its own driving plan without the support staff back on Earth having to direct everything manually. Though the rover drivers still carefully oversee the process to make sure the routes are safe and that they are heading in the right direction to find geologically interesting samples.

Related

“We have a capability called ‘thinking while driving,’” Verma said. “The rover is thinking about the autonomous drive while its wheels are turning.”

The big advantage of this capability is not in terms of maneuverability but in terms of speed. Manually planning out the exact safest driving route possible all the way from Earth takes a lot of time, which is one reason why rovers rarely move more than 200 meters in a day. With the new ability, Perseverance may be able to go as fast as 120 meters per hour.

“We sped up AutoNav by four or five times,” said Michael McHenry, the mobility domain lead and part of JPL’s team of rover planners. “We’re driving a lot farther in a lot less time than Curiosity demonstrated.”

For comparison, the Curiosity rover, which has roughly similar hardware to Perseverance but does not have the new AutoNav system, is currently traveling at around 20 meters per hour. The rover engineers are hopeful that this increased speed will help Perseverance in its search for evidence of ancient life.

“We’re going to be able to get to places the scientists want to go much more quickly,” said Jennifer Trosper, who has worked on every one of NASA’s Martian rovers and is the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover project manager. “Now we are able to drive through these more complex terrains instead of going around them: It’s not something we’ve been able to do before.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA selects 9 companies to work on low-cost Mars projects
This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.

NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a big, high-budget, long-term project to bring back a sample from Mars but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration of the red planet. The agency recently announced it has selected nine private companies that will perform a total of 12 studies into small-scale projects for enabling Mars science.

The companies include big names in aerospace like Lockheed Martin and United Launch Services, but also smaller companies like Redwire Space and Astrobotic, which recently landed on the surface of the moon. Each project will get a 12-week study to be completed this summer, with NASA looking at the results to see if it will incorporate any of the ideas into its future Mars exploration plans.

Read more
Relive Mars rover’s spectacular landing exactly 3 years ago
NASA's Perserverance Mars rover.

A screenshot from actual footage of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars in 2021. NASA/JPL

It’s exactly three years since NASA’s rover, Perseverance, touched down on Mars in spectacular fashion.

Read more
NASA is looking for volunteers for yearlong simulated Mars mission
The CHAPEA mission 1 crew (from left: Nathan Jones, Ross Brockwell, Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu) exit a prototype of a pressurized rover and make their way to the CHAPEA facility ahead of their entry into the habitat on June 25, 2023.

If you've ever wanted to visit Mars, then NASA has an offer for you. Though the agency isn't sending humans to the red planet quite yet, it is preparing for a future crewed Mars mission by creating a simulated mission here on Earth -- and it's looking for volunteers.

Simulated missions look at people's psychological and health responses to conditions similar to what astronauts would experience on a deep space mission. In the case of the Mars mission, called Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog or CHAPEA, the aim is to simulate a Martian environment using a 3D-printed habitat and a set of Mars-related tasks that crew members must perform.

Read more