The DLR Moon-Mars Test Site for Robotic Planetary Exploration

Abstract

Building robots for planetary exploration missions requires intensive testing throughout all phases of the design process. Especially, during hard- and software development as well as mission training the process benefits of easy-to-access test sites that offer realistic conditions. For this purpose we have built the 1500 m² DLR Moon-Mars test site in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. The facility provides a large variety of geological formations and ground substrates on a compact terrain as well as a rich set of power and network connections. As a unique feature of the outdoor test site, we prepared a dedicated link to the German Space Operations Center that enables telerobotic experiments from ISS. Furthermore, we provide an optical tracking system for ground truth measurement and control. We describe the design and construction process of the test site and present an overview of its features. Three experiments with our robots LRU1, LRU2 and the Scout rover regarding autonomous navigation and mapping, autonomous manipulation and sampling as well as advanced mobility tests demonstrate the usage of the test site.