A Simplified time-delayed testing environment.

Mika Prada-Enzmann

Mentor: Dr. Peter Kazazides

Department of Computer Science, UMBC

One of the most difficult parts of designing an autonomous rover is making sure that everything functions as designed. To test rovers engineers often test designs virtually for rapid prototyping in a more simplified environment; Although this does not replace real world testing it can aid the early parts of the design process by having a simplified environment where engineers can create very specific circumstances to test behavior. My work is helping with this by creating a simulation environment where various algorithms can be used to simulate time-delayed teleportation when constructing a simple structure. Such an environment, when completed, would allow for the rapid testing of new algorithms and the potential creation of a competition where people submit code to be tested to see how well it performs. We’re creating this using AMBF, a real-time simulation software and Robot Operating System (ROS) a software framework designed for programming robots. I hope to help create a testbed of sorts which will allow for the rapid testing of autonomous routines. We hope that with this project completed we will be able to present it to NASA for their followup to the Space Robotics Challenge, a challenge in which students compete to program a virtual rover to complete tasks in a simulated moon environment. I hope that my work will allow for more rapid prototyping and simplified testing of autonomous routines.