The Martian Autonomous Routing System (or MARS) is a command-line utility that produces lists of coordinates describing possible routes for a rover to take to reach a goal coordinate from the start, whilst navigating a provided elevation map, within the bounds of its physical capabilities.
- Ross Blassingame
- Robert Ballard
- Shawn Polson
- Josh Jenkins
- Chandler Samuels
- Dean Moser
This project is sponsored by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with Marcel Llopis providing advice and oversight for the work.
To use the program, you must provide it:
- a compatible elevation map (see below)
- a start coordinate (in pixels) corresponding to a location on the input map
- an end coordinate (in pixels) also corresponding to the map
- a specified algorithm to run (see below)
- specifications for a theoretical rover, including a maximum slope it can safely traverse, as well as field of view for using the limited route algorithm
Compatible elevation map formats include:
Format | Accepted Extension(s) |
---|---|
GeoTIFF | .tiff, .tif |
Available algorithms include:
Algorithm | Prompt Key | Description |
---|---|---|
Unlimited scope | U | Navigates from start to goal with perfect information with regards to the elevation map. |
Limited scope | L | Navigates from start to goal with information gathered as it traverses the elevation map. |
This information can be provided to the utility by simply running it, and following the prompts.
Once the program completes, the resultant path the chosen algorithm determined will be output to the terminal in a human-readable format. It can be run again to check against another algorithm or saved to a CSV.
something open source TODO