Remote Sensing, Vol. 12, Pages 624: Vision-Based Decision Support for Rover Path Planning in the Chang`e-4 Mission (Remote Sensing)

In planetary rover missions, rover path planning is critical to ensure the safety and efficiency of the rover traverse and in situ explorations. In the Chang’e-4 (CE-4) mission, we have proposed and developed vision-based decision support methods comprising obstacle map generation and path evaluation for the rover. At each waypoint along the rover traverse, digital elevation model (DEM) is automatically generated, which is then used for obstacle map generation and path searching. For path evaluation, the searched path and the predicted wheel trajectories are projected onto the original images captured by different cameras to coincide with the real observation scenario. The proposed methods have been applied in the CE-4 mission to support teleoperation of the rover, and examples of multiple applications used in the mission are presented in this paper. Under the support of the proposed techniques, by the end of the 14th lunar day (3 February 2020), the rover has already travelled 367.25 meters on the far side of the Moon.