Lunar Rover Simulation Conducted on Mt. Etna

ESA has conducted a lunar rover simulation on Mt. Etna, with the robot being controlled by an operator stationed 23 kilometers (≈14 miles) away.

"A simulated mission like this is essentially a role-play in which it is very important that the in-scenario players experience complete immersion."

Analog-1 project manager Kjetil Wormnes.

In a complex role-played version of a mission to the Moon, controllers at ESOC combined with a team of geological scientists and ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter (pictured, below) to oversee a rover’s collection of rock samples. Acting as if he were in lunar orbit, the astronaut was in fact based in a hotel room in Catania, Sicily, with the rover 23 kilometers away and 2,600 meters (≈8,500 feet) uphill on the volcanic flanks of Mount Etna. As Thomas commanded the rover to pick up rocks his hand experienced just what the robot’s gripper felt – an added dimension in remote control.

This concluding part of ESA's ‘Analog-1’ project took place as part of a larger multi-agency, multi-rover campaign, organized by the DLR German Aerospace Center. The Autonomous Robotic Networks to Help Modern Societies, ARCHES, project probed the ability of autonomous robots to collaborate and share data on a networked basis.

For this lunar rover simulation, ESA’s four-wheeled, two-armed Interact rover was built by the Agency's Human Robot Interaction Lab and modified for the rugged slopes of the volcano. This robot formed part of a team consisting of two DLR rovers – Lightweight Rover Units 1 and 2 – along with a fixed ‘lunar’ lander supplying WiFi and power to the rovers, plus a drone for surface mapping. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology contributed the centipede-like Scout crawler, optimized for tough terrain, which could also serve as a relay between Interact and the lander, boosting its effective area of operations.

The rover’s delivery of rocks to the lander marked the conclusion of a four-day simulated mission in which a rover landed on the Moon to collect samples, guided by a rover operations centre and science backroom on Earth, and an astronaut aboard the lunar Gateway station. The rover operations were coordinated from ESOC in Germany, while the astronaut and scientists were kept in separate rooms in a nearby hotel.

"A simulated mission like this is essentially a role-play in which it is very important that the in-scenario players experience complete immersion," said Analog-1 project manager Kjetil Wormnes. "In this case, that meant the rover operators at ESOC, as well as the scientists in the science backroom, and of course the astronaut on board our analogue lunar Gateway all needed to feel they were on the Moon. Mount Etna was chosen as the analog site for its excellent lunar-like geology, allowing suitably deep immersion, while the astronaut and the scientists were kept apart in a hotel in nearby Catania.”

For maximum realism, a second of signal delay was added to the rover control system, equivalent to the time it would take commands to travel between the Gateway station and the lunar surface. The force feedback control method has been designed to operate with such delays.

"It was a challenging setup, but the systems worked extremely well, and we learned a lot about operating a rover on the Moon that can help us when we do this for real in the future. We’re very happy because it took a lot of work to reach this point, and the testing here at Etna was repeatedly delayed due to COVID-19,” Kjetil said.

“We’ve learned a lot about collaboration between ground control on Earth and the crew aboard a space station orbiting the Moon, both operating a rover on the surface – this “shared” operation can be extremely efficient –much more efficient than if either side does it alone,” Reiter said.

The only lunar rover simulation test left undone was to prove that the system could cope with the inherent unpredictability of an outdoor, natural environment – now achieved with this latest Mount Etna campaign. Reiter contended with a steep slopes and the rover’s wheels getting trapped in sand, but still managed to retrieve the samples and return them to the waiting lander.

(Images provided with ESA news release)