Mars Analogue Terrain

Laboratory's Indoor Testing Mars Yard

The Mars Analogue Terrain is a square 9m by 9m terrain ‘sandbox’ filled with different sizes of sand, gravel and rock designed according to models of a Martian terrain. It is equipped with a fixed installation of a motion capture measurement system, the VICON Motion Capture Camera System that provides ground truth localisation data of the subjects tracked, which can be a rover body pose or positioning of sensor subsystems or interfacing structures.

The terrain is used for initial prototype testing and debugging of algorithms and as means of maturing technology to be later tested in more representative environments.

Small- to mid-size rovers are tested in the Mars yard to demonstrate locomotion or navigation capabilities over a planetary surface of different terrain characteristics. Latest significant testing campaigns that the reader can be referred to are the Wheel Walking Tests executed in November 2014 which results were published in the last ASTRA conference of 2015 (ESTEC, Noordwijk). A link to the conference presentation can be found on the right side of this webpage.