Abstract
A new space rover type, known as a hedgehog, has been proposed for exploration of asteroids and other small planetary bodies. These could be used as a swarm to cover asteroid surfaces efficiently and robustly, given the unknown terrain and potential for the failure of individual rovers. This paper discusses the challenges of how to set behavior rules for the swarm so that they move efficiently over an unmapped asteroid surface. A swarm rule-set was tested through simulation, using the swarm simulation tool Netlogo. The simulations used a combination of repelling and attracting rules to move the swarm about the asteroid surface, with a view to cover a large percentage of the surface in the fastest time possible. It was found that increasing the number of rovers in the swarm led to diminishing returns with respect to ground explored per rover. It was also found that when there were greater numbers of rovers in the swarm, the optimal strength of repulsion was lower. Future improvements have been suggested for simulations to test the swarms on different asteroid types.
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Crowe, W., Jindal, D., Page, J., Olsen, J. (2018). Swarm Mechanism for “Hedgehog” Asteroid Rover, Using Netlogo Simulations. In: Naweed, A., Wardaszko, M., Leigh, E., Meijer, S. (eds) Intersections in Simulation and Gaming. ISAGA SimTecT 2016 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10711. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78795-4_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78795-4_12
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