Efficient Power-Aware Resource Constrained Scheduling and Execution for Planetary Rovers

This paper presents and evaluates an integrated power-aware, model-based autonomous control architecture for managing the execution of rover actions in the context of planetary mission exploration. The proposed solution is embedded within an application scenario of reference which consists on a rover-based mission concept aimed at collecting Mars samples that may be returned to Earth at a later date for further investigation. This study elaborates on the exploitation of advanced decision-making capabilities within a flexible execution process targeted at generating and safely executing scheduling solutions representing mission plans, seamlessly supporting online plan optimization and dynamic management of new incoming activities. In this work, an experimental analysis on the performance of the control architecture's capabilities is presented, throughout two representative cases of study running upon an integrated test-bed platform built on top of the 3DROV ESA planetary rover simulator.