Mars One launches crowd-funding project

Mars One is an international initiative aiming at sending the first humans on the surface of the red planet and eventually building a permanent human settlement. It consists of a series of missions that will start with sending a robotic vehicle in 2018 which will deploy the first modules and demonstrate the application of the necessary technologies before actually sending humans, starting in 2024.

Figures say that more than 200.000 people from all around the world have applied for an opportunity to be among those stepping on the surface of Mars for the first time in human history. Next to this record, Mars One claims to be the first space project that is open for private funding. In fact, a crowd-funding scheme has just been launched at Indiegogo where anyone can be a contributor and write history.

Obviously the amount of funds set by the crowd-funding scheme ($400.000) are not meant to support the total budget of such an extraordinary project, but it gives the opportunity to people to be actively involved in making this happen. After the successful missions of the earlier missions of Opportunity and Curiosity, Mars One can be the next leap in space exploration and boost robotics technology to unprecedented frontiers.

Terrain Traversability Analysis Methods for Unmanned Ground Vehicles; A Survey

Motion planning for unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) constitutes a domain of research where several disciplines meet, ranging from artificial intelligence and machine learning to robot perception and computer vision. In view of the plurality of related applications such as planetary exploration, search and rescue, agriculture, mining and off road exploration, the aim of the present survey is to review the field of 3D terrain traversability analysis that is employed at a preceding stage as a means to effectively and efficiently guide the task of motion planning. We identify that in the epicenter of all related methodologies, 3D terrain information is used which is acquired from LIDAR, stereo range data, color or other sensory data and occasionally combined with static or dynamic vehicle models expressing the interaction of the vehicle with the terrain. By taxonomizing the various directions that have been explored in terrain perception and analysis, this review takes a step toward agglomerating the dispersed contributions from individual domains by elaborating on a number of key similarities as well as differences, in order to stimulate research in addressing the open challenges and inspire future developments.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2013.01.006