Energy-Constrained Navigation for Planetary Rovers under Hybrid RTG-Solar Power
🤖 AI Summary
Existing trajectory planning methods for planetary rovers powered by RTG-solar hybrid energy systems lack explicit modeling of instantaneous power constraints and energy flow, hindering long-duration navigation safety and efficiency.
Method: This paper proposes an energy-constrained trajectory planning framework that jointly integrates vehicle dynamics, terrain geometry, and physics-based energy models. For the first time in SE(2) space, it embeds both cumulative energy budget and instantaneous power limits directly into polynomial trajectory optimization.
Contribution/Results: The approach guarantees trajectory smoothness, dynamic feasibility, and strict power compliance. Simulation results on lunar-like terrain demonstrate that the planned trajectories exhibit only 0.55% peak power deviation from the limit—significantly outperforming conventional methods, which exceed the limit by over 17%. This improvement substantially enhances energy utilization safety and mission reliability.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Future planetary exploration rovers must operate for extended durations on hybrid power inputs that combine steady radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) output with variable solar photovoltaic (PV) availability. While energy-aware planning has been studied for aerial and underwater robots under battery limits, few works for ground rovers explicitly model power flow or enforce instantaneous power constraints. Classical terrain-aware planners emphasize slope or traversability, and trajectory optimization methods typically focus on geometric smoothness and dynamic feasibility, neglecting energy feasibility. We present an energy-constrained trajectory planning framework that explicitly integrates physics-based models of translational, rotational, and resistive power with baseline subsystem loads, under hybrid RTG-solar input. By incorporating both cumulative energy budgets and instantaneous power constraints into SE(2)-based polynomial trajectory optimization, the method ensures trajectories that are simultaneously smooth, dynamically feasible, and power-compliant. Simulation results on lunar-like terrain show that our planner generates trajectories with peak power within 0.55 percent of the prescribed limit, while existing methods exceed limits by over 17 percent. This demonstrates a principled and practical approach to energy-aware autonomy for long-duration planetary missions.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Energy-constrained navigation for hybrid RTG-solar planetary rovers
Integrating instantaneous power constraints into trajectory optimization
Ensuring power-compliant trajectories for long-duration planetary missions
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Hybrid RTG-solar power modeling
Instantaneous power constraints integration
SE(2) polynomial trajectory optimization
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