Monday, June 11, 2012

Location:
JOANNEUM RESEARCH
Leonhardstrasse 59, 8010 Graz
Conference Room Continue reading →

In 2018, the European Space Agency will launch the ExoMars rover in a search for evidence of past or present life on Mars and to demonstrate key technologies in preparation for a future Mars Sample Return mission. The following presentations outline work to date in improved processing and representation of Mars and planetary data as part of the PRoVisG goal to maximize scientific return from robotic probes designed to explore Mars and other planets. Continue reading →

The Planetary Robotics and Vision Processing Workshop took place at the European Planetary Science Congress from October 3-7, 2011 in Nantes, France. The theme for this session was: “Planetary Robotics and Vision Processing for Future Planetary Exploration”. With the success of the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers and Phoenix Lander and several planetary exploration missions either being developed or planned for the future, this is an exciting and challenging time for Europe as it embarks upon its own plans and aspirations for planetary exploration. Continue reading →

The Planetary Robotics Vision Ground Processing (PROVISG) project brings together the major groups currently working on planetary robotic vision, consisting of research institutions inside and out of Europe, European Space Agency (ESA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the industrial stakeholders involved in vision & navigation for robotic space missions as well as for their scientific exploitation. It is developing a unified and generic approach for robotic vision ground processing. Continue reading →

One key step in the development of equipment and technology to be used for robotic planetary exploration is their test in relevant environments. To this effect, field trials were conducted in the El Teide National Park in Tenerife (Spain) during September 2011. Its unique features, combining a flat landscape and crater-like dips with scarce vegetation make it an ideal location to test the imaging equipment and processing techniques that have been developed in the framework of the ProvisG programme. Continue reading →

A Workshop on Planetary Robotics and Vision Processing was held during the European Planetary Science Congress 2010 from September 19-25 in Rome, Italy. The workshop was organised by PRoVisG partners and covered key robotics and vision processing areas that must be addressed for future planetary exploration ambitions. More information can be found here.

• Aimed at young researchers, e.g. MSc, PhD students, and Research Associates
• Invited planetary vision processing experts to provide instruction
• Specialist lectures by ExoMars 2018 mission engineers and scientists combined with hands-on vision data processing experiments.
• Topics included current and future planetary vision methods; image data radiometric and geometric calibration; 3D terrain generation and modelling methods; 2D and 3D vision data visualisation; Mars mission trials
• Indoor Mars-yard laboratory and outdoor trials at local beach (Clarach Bay) for image vision data capture
• The ESA/NASA ExoMars 2018 mission was used as a focus for the laboratory and outdoor trials

The Workshop consisted of Presentations, Discussions and practical experiments for data collection in the field of Planetary Robotics and Vision.

Data was collected for the Announcements of Opportunity (Ground Truth for Robotics & Vision). Participation was restricted to PRoVisG Participants, representatives of EC-FP7-SPACE (incl. Reviewers), and ESA.

The workshop addressed vision data acquisition / processing issues that were relevant for current and mid-term development of PanCam hard- and software, experiment planning, calibration, expected scientific data return quality, as well as the interfaces to other ExoMars components such as operations planning, navigation or other PASTEUR instruments. Continue reading →

The PRoVisG consortium met at the German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt, DLR) in Berlin, Germany on March 10-12, 2009. On the agenda were a plenary project review, a project managment board meeting, AO interfacing and requirements review meetings, as well as a public seminar on PRoVisG.