Mobile Robots for Polar Remote Sensing

Mobile robots are becoming more heavily used in environments where human involvement is limited, impossible, or dangerous. These robots perform some of the more dangerous and laborious human tasks on Earth and throughout the solar system, many times with greater efficiency and accuracy, saving both time and resources. As we explore further away from Earth, higher levels of autonomy are also becoming more desired in such applications, one of them being remote sensing. This chapter covers mobile robots that have been designed and built at the University of Kansas to facilitate seismic and radar remote sensing of ice sheets in polar regions. These robots have been developed for and deployed in unstructured, polar environments. System designs, components, deployment and data acquisition algorithms, and experimental results are discussed. In this chapter, future applications, such as an autonomous multi-robot seismic surveying surveying team, are simulated. Future planetary missions will hopefully incorporate similar robotic systems to conduct insitu experiments on other planets. Christopher M. Gifford Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, e-mail: [email protected] Eric L. Akers Mathematics and Computer Science Department, Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, NC 27909, e-mail: [email protected] Richard S. Stansbury Department of Computer and Software Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL 32114, e-mail: [email protected] Arvin Agah Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, e-mail: [email protected]