AEGIS autonomous targeting for the Curiosity rover's ChemCam instrument

Abstract

AEGIS (Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science) is a software suite that will imminently be operational aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, allowing the rover to autonomously detect and prioritize targets in its surroundings, and acquire geochemical spectra using its ChemCam instrument. ChemCam, a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS), is normally used to study targets selected by scientists using images taken by the rover on a previous sol and relayed by Mars orbiters to Earth. During certain mission phases, ground-based target selection entails significant delays and the use of limited communication bandwidth to send the images. AEGIS will allow the science team to define the properties of preferred targets, and obtain geochemical data more quickly, at lower data penalty, without the extra ground-inthe-loop step. The system uses advanced image analysis techniques to find targets in images taken by the rover's stereo navigation cameras (NavCam), and can rank, filter, and select targets based on properties selected by the science team. AEGIS can also be used to analyze images from ChemCam's Remote Micro Imager (RMI) context camera, allowing it to autonomously target very fine-scale features - such as veins in a rock outcrop - which are too small to detect with the range and resolution of NavCam. AEGIS allows science activities to be conducted in a greater range of mission conditions, and saves precious time and command cycles during the rover's surface mission. The system is currently undergoing initial tests and checkouts aboard the rover, and is expected to be operational by late 2015. Other current activities are focused on science team training and the development of target profiles for the environments in which AEGIS is expected to be used on Mars.