VERVE: A 3D Operations Tool for Space Robots

Maintaining a sustainable presence in space requires operations tools that can monitor and control heterogeneous assets in a uniform and collaborative manner. The Visual Environment for Remote Virtual Exploration (VERVE) is a tool that can display telemetry from and control multiple robots simultaneously. Because of its modular design, VERVE has been easily adapted to many kinds of robots and situations. VERVE is currently in use as the rover driving interface for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) lunar prospecting mission and as the supervisory control interface for the Astrobee free-flying robots on the International Space Station (ISS). Previous uses of VERVE include analog field testing of planetary robots, control of a planetary rover from the ISS, and fleet management of self-driving cars.

Central to the VERVE interface is a 3D virtual world that displays robot state, location, and attitude in its environment, joint configuration, raw and derived sensor data, proposed and executing commands, maps, and map annotations in an intuitive manner. Each VERVE instance synchronizes proposed commands and map annotations with other VERVE instances, facilitating collaboration between operators at separate consoles. Time-dependent map layers keep operators up to date with dynamic terrain-specific data, such as sun shadows and direct-to-earth communication coverage. VERVE’s detailed model of the world enables many additional features, such as automatic sun-angle and antenna-unwind decision support, collision-checking and duration estimation for proposed paths, virtual measurement of environmental features, and masking the rover body out of images for better stereo results.

This paper describes the VERVE features that have been developed and refined for varied robotic systems over more than ten years. We also discuss the technologies that enable VERVE’s many capabilities, and the reasons for selecting those technologies. We conclude by exploring the way VERVE has been adapted for a lunar rover mission, and the ease of adapting VERVE for future missions.