BEES For Mars Project Background July 21, 2003

By: Greg Pisanich

'Intelligent' UAVs -- whether used for terrestrial or planetary science applications - represent, perhaps, the ultimate autonomous system challenge. The development and use of aerial explorers to conduct robust planetary science missions -- for those planetary bodies which can support in-atmosphere flight - would provide a degree of mobility and access far above what could be achieved by any other means.

The "BEES for Mars" project is a NASA led research, development, and demonstration effort. The goal of the "BEES for Mars" project can be stated as follows:

Given this over-arching goal, the BEES for Mars (BfM) project currently can be summarized in terms of three general categories of research investigation: on-going funded work at University of California at Berkeley and Australian National University (ANU) on vision-based bio-inspired guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems; work being performed in-house at Ames Research Center on mission planning and execution software systems for aerial vehicles based on mimicking the search, find and foraging behaviors of various living creatures; and finally research focused around science field demonstrations using an assortment of aerial vehicles at Haughton Crater, Devon Island, in Nunavut, Canada.

• BEES for Mars Photo Report, July 25, 2003.

»» Back to Field Reports