NASA uses Mars Helicopter’s SoC for rover navigation upgrade • The Register

NASA has revealed it repurposed the processor the Perseverance rover used to speak with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, to assist the rolling robotic navigate the Purple Planet autonomously “for doubtlessly limitless distances.”

The aerospace company revealed the hack final week in a post that claims it used the rover’s Helicopter Base Station (HBS) as a result of its processor is 100 instances sooner than the rover’s different package.

NASA has beforehand said the HBS runs a Qualcomm 801 processor, a mannequin the cell chip big lists as operating 4 customized Krait CPUs utilizing Arm-compatible cores of the corporate’s personal design, an Adreno 330 GPU and a Hexagon digital sign processor. The Register’s protection stories the fashions on Mars run at 2.26GHz and packs 2GB RAM plus 32GB flash reminiscence, and that NASA ran Linux on the machine.

With Ingenuity now permanently grounded after flying 72 missions, the HBS was idle. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s chief engineer of robotics operations Vandi Verma subsequently contemplated reusing the {hardware}.

NASA calls the brand new workload it created for the SoC “Mars World Localization” and in its put up describes it as that includes “an algorithm that quickly compares panoramic pictures from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps.”

The company says the algorithm “takes about two minutes to pinpoint the rover’s location inside some 10 inches (25 centimeters)” and that it’s already in manufacturing, having been used on February 2nd and sixteenth.

“That is type of like giving the rover GPS. Now it may possibly decide its personal location on Mars,” Verma wrote. “It means the rover will be capable to drive for for much longer distances autonomously, so we’ll discover extra of the planet and get extra science.”

NASA’s put up says the software program means “Perseverance may be commanded to drive to doubtlessly limitless distances with out calling dwelling.”

That’s a considerable enchancment on the rover’s present autonomous navigational instruments, which, the put up explains, can see the robotic develop into “more and more uncertain about its precise location” and generally get it flawed by as much as 35 meters. “Believing it might be too near hazardous terrain, Perseverance could prematurely finish its drive and watch for directions from Earth,” the put up states.

“Tapping into the HBS laptop has had its challenges,” NASA wrote, earlier than explaining that it developed checks that see the algorithm run on the HBS a number of instances earlier than one of many rover’s essential computer systems checks to make sure the outcomes match.

“Throughout testing, the staff repeatedly discovered the rover’s place was off by 1 millimeter,” the put up explains. “They found injury to about 25 bits – a minuscule fraction of the processor’s 1 gigabyte of reminiscence – and developed an answer to isolate these bits whereas the algorithm runs.”

NASA seems to have been too modest to remind us that engaged on the rover can imply latency of as much as 40 minutes, or that the quickest radio aboard Perseverance maxes out at 2 Mbps.

Verma thinks the work executed to develop Mars World Localization, and deploy it on the Snapdragon, will show vital as spacecraft designers use extra industrial silicon. NASA’s put up says its boffins have “already turned their sights to the Moon, the place tough lighting situations and lengthy, chilly lunar nights make understanding precisely the place spacecraft are positioned all of the extra important.” ®