Showing posts with label Rover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rover. Show all posts

Monday, November 21, 2011

After Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity is ready to Go!


Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity is powered with radioisotope thermal generators, and is thus not limited by the availability of solar power. However, it will still need to reduce activity during the coldest winter months, when more of its power will be required to keep its instruments warm. It also carries a more sophisticated analytical instrument package than Spirit and Opportunity. Curiosity will assess past habitability by searching for and identifying organic compounds, possible metabolic products of ancient organisms, and studying the rocks for details about the past climate in which they formed. Curiosity carries ten science instruments. What makes the science instrument suite of Curiosity unique are the analytical tools located within the body of the rover, which will perform detailed chemical analyses of about 70 samples of rock and soil delivered to them by the robotic arm. Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) includes a gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, and tunable laser spectrometer, and is intended to identify organic compounds and also to measure the isotopic ratios of chemical elements important to life. CheMin is an X-ray diffraction X-ray fluorescence instrument, which directly measures the bulk elemental composition of rocks and soils, allowing scientists to infer mineral composition. read more (planetary.org)

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Mubi's Rover With Live Video Streaming...



A Rover project with Live streaming from on board camera and controlled from Tahoe-II board. Commands can be sent from Tahoe-II board (hosting a .net application) to I-BOX Microcontroller using XBEE and same medium is used for I-BOX to stream video from onboard camera to Tahoe-II built-in LCD module.




Rover will be equiped with onboard...

1. Infrared distnace sensor
2. Two surfacce color detector
3. Touch sensor
4. VGA Camera
5. X-BEE Module
6. Light detector

Host applicaiton to control and monitor the mission is developed using...

1. VS.Net 2008
2. .Net Microframework 3.0
Tahoe-II is connected via USB to deploy application on to the board. Board has touch screen which make application very intteractive. Latter it can communicate wirlessly with controlle using X-Bee.




I hope this technology will be mature enough in next couple of years. Then we will be able to take part in Google's Lunar Lander Challenge :).