Research on mission planning in teleoperation of lunar rovers

A synthesized environmental model aimed at mission planning for lunar rovers was developed taking into account all the lunar terrain features, solar energy effects, shadow and communication opportunities. Based on the environmental model, a method of mission planning for lunar rovers was developed, planning the global path dynamically and the activities at the same time. The path planning problem in a dynamic environment can be transformed to a series of path planning problems in static environments by periodically updating the environment at some frequency. During path searching, activities along the path were arranged subject to the constraints being checked. The simulation results showed that the synthesized environmental model properly described all the factors and their effects on mission planning. The mission planning method generates globally optimized paths and constraints-satisfied activities along the paths.