Parallel computing enables the analysis of very large data sets using large collections of flexible models with many variables. The computational methods are based on ideas from computational linear algebra and can draw on the extensive research on parallel algorithms in this area. Many algorithms for the direct and iterative solution of penalised least squares problems and for updating can be ...

The search for life and water on other planetary bodies is of high interest for the space science community. 1 2 Since 2008, Helmholtz Association (HG) supports a project, the so-called Helmholtz Alliance for “Planetary Evolution and Life”, which was set up with members consisting of planetary scientists and engineers. In this project, members aim at solving some of the important questions on h...

Trajectory generation has traditionally been formulated on the assumption that the environment is flat. On rough terrain, however, deviations of the angular velocity vector from the vertical lead to errors which accumulate in a manner similar to the accumulation of attitude errors in odometry. In practice, feedback control can compensate for these errors in modeling by adjusting the path in rea...

This paper outlines the design and implementation of the Mobile Autonomous Robotic Sentry (MARS) unit with facial detection and recognition capabilities. MARS patrols its surrounding area, performing obstacle avoidance and searching for human threats using facial detection. Once a threat has been identified, MARS will aim at its target and fire projectiles. In addition to facial detection, MARS...

The study aimed was to determine the best nonlinear function describing growth stages of Japanese quail breed. To this aim, functions such as exponential, logistic, von Bertalanffy, Brody, and Gompertz were used is in description body weight-age relationship male female quails. Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) data mining algorithm applied individual parameters obtained from dete...

Introduction The Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) has been operating on board of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft since 1998. It consists of three cameras Red and Blue Wide Angle cameras (FOV=140 deg.) and Narrow Angle camera (FOV=0.44 deg.). The Wide Angle camera allows surface resolution down to 230 m/pixel and the Narrow Angle camera down to 1.5 m/pixel. This work is a continuation of the ...

Background: Geoscientists have been doing research on Mars for decades. As the photography technique has improved, we now have thousands of high-resolution stereo pair images but it is difficult to extract quantitative information including relative heights and slopes without the aid of computer vision. Our goal is to create an easy-to-use, accurate and high performance tool which can process a...

Spacecraft exploring Mars such as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, as well as the Mars Science Laboratory or Curiosity rover, have accumulated evidence for wet and habitable conditions on early Mars more than 3 billion years ago. Current conditions, by contrast, are cold, extremely arid and seemingly inhospitable. To evaluate exactly how dry today's environment is, it is impo...

Landing site selection is a compromise between safety concerns associated with the site’s terrain and scientific interest. Therefore, technologies enabling pinpoint landing (sub-100 m accuracies) on the surface of Mars are of interest to increase the number of accessible sites for in-situ research as well as allow placement of vehicles nearby prepositioned assets. A survey of various guidance, ...