Robotic follow-up for human exploration

• Main Authors: Terrence Fong, Maria Bualat, Matthew C. Deans, Byron Adams, Mark Allan, Martha Altobelli, Xavier Bouyssounouse, Tamar Cohen, Joshua Garber Elizabeth Palmer, Trey Smith, Vinh To, Hans Utz, Dawn Wheeler, Kelsey Young
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Canada; Devon Island
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.475.6276; http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a543506.pdf

We are studying how “robotic follow-up ” can improve future planetary exploration. Robotic follow-up, which we define as augmenting human field work with subsequent robot activity, is a field exploration technique designed to increase human productivity and sci-ence return. To better understand the benefits, requirements, limitations and risks as-sociated with this technique, we are conducting analog field tests with human and robot teams at the Haughton Crater impact structure on Devon Island, Canada. In this paper, we discuss the motivation for robotic follow-up, describe the scientific context and system design for our work, and present results and lessons learned from field testing. I.