Field Demonstration and Evaluation of Terrestrial Navigation Technologies for Artemis Surface Navigation Applications

Over the past decade, the capabilities and techniques for navigation in challenging environments have blossomed from the usage of simple fixed markers to completely autonomous visual sensing and localization. Continuous advances in image processing, optical sensors, small size high bandwidth radios, and increasingly accurate miniature inertial measurement units have made it possible to perform high precision positioning in environments where global navigation satellite systems may be difficult to utilize (such as indoors, remote areas, or in urban cores). These applications on Earth range across a diverse set of applications from warehouse and logistics operations, autonomous operation of a variety of aerial and surface platforms, to high precision geological mapping. These technologies have also been demonstrated on extraplanetary bodies through Ingenuity’s use of MEM IMUs and visual odometry for autonomous flights on Mars. The same environmental conditions that have driven need and development of these are similar to the operational constraints on the lunar surface. In fact, several of these technologies are being evaluated for their potential use to address Artemis navigation needs. These have helped to provide insights to the state of the art in autonomous navigation. Similarly, increased insight to their performance and operational constraints feed back into Artemis navigation architecture studies to inform the feasibility and usage of these in a lunar environment.

To address this knowledge gap, several projects are underway to field test these solutions within a field testing environment. The individual solutions being investigated provide insight to a wide range of implementations. These include applications of Ultra-wideband Ranging and Localization, LIDAR-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, LIDAR-based Terrain Relative Navigation, Pedestrian Dead Reckoning, Visual Inertial Odometry, Photogrammetry applied to Video, and Radio Direction Finding. This paper will provide an overview of the primary lunar surface navigation challenges and provide a discussion of how each of these technologies could address early Artemis navigation needs. Additionally, field testing results of each will be discussed providing demonstration of their application within lunar-like environments (including regolith fields and remote field testing from Artic highlands to volcanic fields to cave systems). While any one of these solutions could be integrated within Artemis, this paper highlights their implementation, challenges, and opportunities for how these approaches could be leveraged to enable a robust navigation architecture for planetary surface exploration.