1999 IEEE International Conference on Information Visualization (Cat. No. PR00210)
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Abstract

Virtual reality techniques are being used to support the development of unmanned space-probes intended to land on other planets in the solar system. These planetary landers will operate autonomously during landing and will use vision for navigation and guidance down to a safe landing spot. Suitable vision techniques have been developed but must be extensively tested on realistic test surfaces. A system (LunarSim) for producing realistic simulations of heavily cratered planetary surfaces has been developed to support exhaustive testing of vision guidance software.This paper begins by describing the reasons for developing a realistic simulation of the lunar surface. The techniques that have been used to produce models of impact craters are then described. A description of the LunarSim software is provided and an example is presented of an image sequence produced using LunarSim. Finally a summary of related current and future work is given.
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