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MerAB
Can you use the Microscopic Imager to see under the Rover? Or can you use maybe the robotic arm as a "mirror"? So we could say whether the Rover touches the ground.
333
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ May 17 2009, 05:28 PM) *
That is pretty awesome! If only that model had working rocker-bogie system the state of the wheels would have been represented with even more fidelity. If only I could use flour in the testbed but I was told it is a fire hazard. And cinnamon too! The ISIL would smell so good!

Paolo


Have you considered using a mixtures of glass microballoons & sand or cement to simulate flour for the beautiful but deadly white sand traps of Mars? smile.gif
edwinkite
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ May 14 2009, 03:14 AM) *
If you can suggest a kernel filter, I am all ears. I used the Gimp to apply a bit of unsharp mask on the LF wheel MI image from Opportunity and got something, but still not too clear. If you have any SW and are good at deblurring, email me the image (or if there is any interest post it in the Opportunity side).

Paolo


If you know the distance between the camera and the target the Lucy-Richardson method is probably optimal. Use 'deconvlucy' in MATLAB (requires Image Processing Toolbox).

- Edwin Kite
alan
QUOTE (MerAB @ May 17 2009, 11:51 AM) *
Can you use the Microscopic Imager to see under the Rover? Or can you use maybe the robotic arm as a "mirror"? So we could say whether the Rover touches the ground.

from one of Roverdriver's post in another thread:
QUOTE
Unfortunately, one of the outcomes of the recent series of warm reboots is that temporarily we cannot use the IDD. This is because in case the rover reboots while doing an IDD motion, we could lose the position knowledge of the various joints. If that happened we would need to re-calibrate the IDD joints and that is a procedure that was never done on Mars before, just at ATLO. Although I have been assured that this is a simple procedure I'm not so sure I would like to compound on the current state of the vehicle.

The use of the IDD is _not_ lost forever, we just need to make sure we can recalibrate on Mars: have a sequence ready to go in case the unfortunate happens.

Paolo
bruc
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ May 17 2009, 12:28 PM) *
That is pretty awesome! If only that model had working rocker-bogie system the state of the wheels would have been represented with even more fidelity. If only I could use flour in the testbed but I was told it is a fire hazard. And cinnamon too! The ISIL would smell so good!

Paolo


Talc or gypsum powder could substitute for flour, and neither burns. --Bob
Astro0
When I took the Rover model out of its 'flour-cinnamon-based' ISIL, it left behind a rather pleasing effect smile.gif
Click to view attachment

EDIT: For what the 'real' ISIL will use for its soil testing...I'd say that they have that well in-hand and will come up with a perfect match based on the data they get from the Rover's IDD analysis. The nice thing about my flour-cinnamon version is that I can make a cake afterwards to celebrate the fact that Spirit has become 'unstuck'. wink.gif
nprev
That's so close in appearance to some of the actual HP soil exposure sites that it's downright eerie! blink.gif
RoverDriver
QUOTE (Astro0 @ May 17 2009, 04:46 PM) *
When I took the Rover model out of its 'flour-cinnamon-based' ISIL, it left behind a rather pleasing effect smile.gif
...

Wow. That reminds me of the testing we did in the ISIL back four years ago!

QUOTE (bruc @ May 17 2009, 03:59 PM) *
Talc or gypsum powder could substitute for flour, and neither burns. --Bob

Thanks! Will look into it.

Paolo
mhoward
Here's a QuickTime VR of the current location (4.1 MB).
Astro0
That's an awesome QTVR Michael.
The more I look at this spot, the more convinced I am that Paolo and others will get Spirit out. smile.gif
Click to view attachment
MerAB
Here is a false colour panorama from spirit on Sol 1906, showing a piece of the rover deck:

Click to view attachment

bgarlick
IF Spirit is resting/stuck on a rock on its under side...

1) could the rover be lifted by rotating some wheels forward while rotating other wheels backwards to rotate/pinch/fold the rocker-bogie suspension and lever up the rover?

2) does the IDD have enough force to be able to lift the rover up if say the RAT was pushed down into the groud hard enough with the arm ? I could even imagine coordinating the IDD arm motion with the wheel motion to both drag the rover forward while pushing down and at the same time turning the wheels.
ElkGroveDan
Folks, let's help Paolo out by reading back through this discussion before asking him the same questions over and over again. He has answered some of these several times already.
briv1016
New press release regarding Spirit:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pr.../20090518a.html
alan
love the reflective safety vest worn by the man with the shovel, gotta make sure you aren't run over by one of the high speed rovers
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...IMG_1623_br.jpg
Astro0
alan: love the reflective safety vest worn by the man with the shovel

Could we just send the guy with the shovel to Mars and get him to dig Spirit out laugh.gif
jamescanvin
QUOTE (briv1016 @ May 19 2009, 05:58 AM) *



QUOTE
The rover team is using Opportunity to test a procedure for possible use by Spirit: looking underneath the rover with the microscopic imager camera that is mounted on the end of the rover's arm.


smile.gif

EDIT: I see I'm a bit late - these are already down - nice!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2009-05-19/
djellison
WOW - that's better than I was expecting!!!
Tesheiner
Now, if the wheels were really that big! tongue.gif

Edited: really, really nice pictures! I think they deserve to be included in a post, not only the links.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
Ant103
blink.gif
OMG!

It's blurry, but that's here ohmy.gif What a view! This is the first time we can see the middle left en right wheel. Very interesting to see that.
Astro0
OK. Don't be too critical, but here's my take on these beautiful images.
I've taken lots of liberty with them and a stack of guesses to align them and then enhanced the heck out of them.
At the very least, I think that this test using Opportunity's MI should give the MER Team confidence to do the same with Spirit.
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

EDIT: I agree with James (below), this is definitely a plus for Doug's 'MI MER Panorama' concept.
jamescanvin
I was waiting for someone to do that - nice one Astro0 - that highly sharpened one is awesome!

That's it - I'm officially joining Doug's 'image the whole rover with the MI' campaign, it would be totally amazing. smile.gif
Ant103
I do smile.gif

(sad to dont't have a flexible focus on MI)
RoverDriver
QUOTE (alan @ May 18 2009, 09:41 PM) *
love the reflective safety vest worn by the man with the shovel, gotta make sure you aren't run over by one of the high speed rovers
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre...IMG_1623_br.jpg


Unfortunately I do not know his name, but the ves is because he is one of the people who takes care of landscaping at JPL. They just grabbed a couple of them for the task. This will be a test to verify if this material would be a good simulation for the soil on Mars. We'll see...

Paolo
RoverDriver
QUOTE (Astro0 @ May 19 2009, 03:29 AM) *
OK. Don't be too critical, but here's my take on these beautiful images.
I've taken lots of liberty with them and a stack of guesses to align them and then enhanced the heck out of them.
At the very least, I think that this test using Opportunity's MI should give the MER Team confidence to do the same with Spirit.
...


Wow, thanks Astro0. I took these to see what we could see on Spirit. The first two are taken with the IDD further from the WEB, the second set is with the IDD as close I could safely get (the turret is just under the IDD shoulder). The image quality is similar for the two positions, but in the second position we can see more detail, even the wheel cleats! In the simulation I thought I had more coverage, but it is not bad as a first attempt. Thanks for the mosaic!

Paolo
BrianL
Nice pictures, but Oppy has an advantage in being at full clearance and lots of light is available underneath. With Spirit's situation, I expect it will be very dark under there. Could be hard to tell if anything is contacting the underside, unless you can position the camera to capture any gap with backlighting.
Astro0
Just to stretch the brain a little, here's a comparison of the MI images and the area under Opportunity as seen through MMB (Oppy's position as close as the program allows).
I think that there's enough detail here to pick out some of the surface features.
Click to view attachment

Amazing images Paolo (RoverDriver), well done! smile.gif
RoverDriver
QUOTE (BrianL @ May 19 2009, 05:31 AM) *
Nice pictures, but Oppy has an advantage in being at full clearance and lots of light is available underneath. With Spirit's situation, I expect it will be very dark under there. Could be hard to tell if anything is contacting the underside, unless you can position the camera to capture any gap with backlighting.


I don't know about the lighting. We'll see. Hopefully, since Spirit MI lens is cleaner we should get more detail. It wil take some time to get the MIs from Spirit tho. We first have to run some tests with the testbed: if we have an amnesia event we need to make sure we can recover the position knowledge of the IDD. It will take a few days at least, possibly the rest of the week.

Paolo
cbcnasa
Great images. What is the risk / concern of damage to the underside of Spirt?
Stu
Paolo,

Can I just take a moment here to thank you for all these insights you're giving us? We all know how busy you must be right now, so it's just wonderful that you're taking the time to keep us updated with how things are going. I'm sure everyone really, really appreciates it.

More proof of how generous and cool the people at JPL are! smile.gif
marsophile
QUOTE (Ant103 @ May 19 2009, 03:52 AM) *
(sad to dont't have a flexible focus on MI)


If the MI could look through something approximating a pinhole on the rover, that might increase the depth of field.
SpaceListener
Very good testing pictures on Oppy's belly. The Doug suggestion really worked!. Now, I look forward in knowing ones from Spirit. According to the pictures photo's quality, we will be able to know better about the progress of wheels advancement in the future attempts.

I appreciate much the participation of LandRover in providing the feedback to us. smile.gif
Pertinax
QUOTE (marsophile @ May 19 2009, 11:19 AM) *
If the MI could look through something approximating a pinhole on the rover, that might increase the depth of field.


Marsophile, please don't take this with anything but the good humor it was intended with: your comment reminds me of Guy in Galaxy Quest saying "I know! You can construct a weapon. Look around, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?" -- I think both MERs are woefully short on usable pinholes. smile.gif


Paolo: in the MI images taken with Oppy, it looks like the MI was position a bit below the level of the WEB and pitched down several degrees? With any Spirit underbelly MIs, would the MI be positioned so the the center of the FOV would be to be even to just slightly below the WEB so as to capture the best possible profile of the terrain under Spirit? Actually, several pointing with varying pitches and MI elevation relative to the WEB might be the most useful in discerning the rough relative positions of the profile constituents. All of my comments are made with the assumption that the lighting under Spirit will be not be sufficient for anything other than silhouettes.

-- Pertinax
marsophile
QUOTE (Pertinax @ May 19 2009, 07:58 AM) *
Marsophile, please don't take this with anything but the good humor it was intended with: your comment reminds me of Guy in Galaxy Quest saying "I know! You can construct a weapon. Look around, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?" -- I think both MERs are woefully short on usable pinholes. smile.gif


Anything that reduces the effective shutter size will sharpen the focus to some extent, for example, looking over the edge of a strut. Pinhole is just the extreme case.
RoverDriver
QUOTE (cbcnasa @ May 19 2009, 05:32 AM) *
Great images. What is the risk / concern of damage to the underside of Spirt?


The rover might be high centered on a small pile of rocks. In addition, there might be a rock in the LM wheel well.

Paolo
RoverDriver
QUOTE (Pertinax @ May 19 2009, 07:58 AM) *
...
Paolo: in the MI images taken with Oppy, it looks like the MI was position a bit below the level of the WEB and pitched down several degrees? With any Spirit underbelly MIs, would the MI be positioned so the the center of the FOV would be to be even to just slightly below the WEB so as to capture the best possible profile of the terrain under Spirit? Actually, several pointing with varying pitches and MI elevation relative to the WEB might be the most useful in discerning the rough relative positions of the profile constituents. All of my comments are made with the assumption that the lighting under Spirit will be not be sufficient for anything other than silhouettes.

-- Pertinax


I wanted to keep the IDD turret as high as possible while still being able to image below the WEB. In this configuration we would have the turret only a few cm above the surface. I would really try to avoid scraping the turret on the ground, they might revoke my driver's license ;-)

Paolo
Fred B
I'm surprised nobody has posted a deconvolution of the MI images yet, so here goes. 24 iterations of Lucy-Richardson with a synthetic PSF in Maxim DL, followed by Photoshop unsharp masking at radius 2, 500%. The panel of three is the original, the L-R, and the L-R plus unsharp. The technique is noise limited, so this would work better with better exposed, fully calibrated images and if there were some number of identical frames to average. The ringing near sharp contrast transitions is an artifact that can be reduced, but it's non-trivial to do.
Pertinax
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ May 19 2009, 12:49 PM) *
I would really try to avoid scraping the turret on the ground, they might revoke my driver's license ;-)

Paolo


Thank you -- and please don't loose your license! laugh.gif

-- Pertianx
djellison
That ground scraping issue was why I had a go with my cruddy low-fidelity emulation (in here http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...mp;#entry140354 ) of imaging the middle and rear wheels from the 'outside' rather than looking in. That under-belly shot is still going to be usefull and required though - to get that ground clearance data.
MerAB
Here is a different (from this Sol) piece of the Calypso panorama:

Click to view attachment
ElkGroveDan
QUOTE (Fred B @ May 19 2009, 09:54 AM) *
I'm surprised nobody has posted a deconvolution of the MI images yet, so here goes. 24 iterations of Lucy-Richardson with a synthetic PSF in Maxim DL, followed by Photoshop unsharp masking at radius 2, 500%.



That's darn impressive.
Phil Stooke
Yes, we should abandon the pancam and use MI for everything!

Phil
Oersted
Yes, with deconvolution and several images from slightly different locations, it should be possible to get pretty sharp images. Also, taking images of the Spirit underbelly area against the sun should give good contrasy images to work deconvolution on. Also love the idea of effectively getting a higher f-stop from shooting behind a strut, or something.
nprev
QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ May 19 2009, 10:22 AM) *
That's darn impressive.


I gotta second that! blink.gif Extremely impressive first post, Fred!

Paolo, do we have any idea if the possible pile of rocks underneath are resting on bedrock or on a sandpile? Might make a difference if the "dig down & spin" method is attempted.

The "pile" part of the rocks is good, though; would presumably make it easier for her to slip off of them.
RoverDriver
QUOTE (nprev @ May 19 2009, 04:23 PM) *
Paolo, do we have any idea if the possible pile of rocks underneath are resting on bedrock or on a sandpile?


Can't say for sure, but the position of the wheels seem to indicate that this is a sandy area laugh.gif From the 1870 NCAM it looks like these are loose rocks, not one piece.

Paolo
SFJCody
If it's possible that the mechanical properties of the soil vary significantly with temperature then maybe Spirit could try a few wheel revs in the cold martian night.
Burmese
Spirit's power actuals from sol 1911: 707 Watt-hours

In some ways, being stuck while her power increases is even more frustrating...
marsophile
QUOTE (Oersted @ May 19 2009, 11:34 AM) *
Also love the idea of effectively getting a higher f-stop from shooting behind a strut, or something.


It appears that the dust cover on the MI has a stepper motor:

http://www.esmats.eu/esmatspapers/pastpape...3/dougherty.pdf

If it is possible to partially close the dust cover, this may be another way to achieve a higher f-stop. Admittedly the dust cover is partially transparent, but the difference in light intensity may be enough to sharpen the image.
BrianL
QUOTE (Burmese @ May 20 2009, 02:52 PM) *
In some ways, being stuck while her power increases is even more frustrating...


Will this wind... be so mighty... as to lift Spirit out of the... diiiirt? biggrin.gif
RoverDriver
QUOTE (marsophile @ May 20 2009, 12:55 PM) *
...
If it is possible to partially close the dust cover, this may be another way to achieve a higher f-stop.


I will inquire about it. Yes we can command the dust cover to move only partially.

QUOTE
Admittedly the dust cover is partially transparent
...


After 1900+ sols, we can all assume that the dust cover is completely opaque ;-)

Paolo
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