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  • A CNES facility to simulate Mars landscape

    Paper ID

    93-iaf-539

    author

    • Josette Runavot
    • Mario Delail

    company

    CNES

    country

    France

    year

    1993

    abstract

    GE R OMS* is a consortium of laboratories belonging to three French national agencies CNRS/LAAS, ONERA/CERT and CNES/CST, its objectives are : . built a test site on a 6200 m2 plot of land owned by the French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in Toulouse ; this plot is reshaped to resemble the barrem surface of Mars and used to test new robotic vehicles that may someday journey to the Red Planet, . manage this site and specially achieve extended autonomy, environmental survival and selfsustainable mission performance tests in natural or simulated Mars environment, . prepare and manage test campaign on the GEROMS site and on natural sites for clients like, in the space frame, the Russian MARS 96 project, IARES*, VAP*. The test site comprises, "an image area" dedicated to image processing algorithm validations and "a navigation area" involved in perception, localization, decision and navigation tests. A test vehicle is part of the test facilities. The organisation, objectives and tests facilities of the GEROMS are detailed in this paper, especially autonomous control and navigation test for application to long-range Mars or Lunar surface exploration. After the test facility description, its representativness is discussed, considerations are stated concerning the tests protocol. Results of the first campaign, undertacken in the frame of the MARS96 project are presented.