Simulating GPS-denied Autonomous UAV Navigation for Detection of Surface Water Bodies

The aim to colonize extra-terrestrial planets has been of great interest in recent years. For Mars, or other planets to sustain human life, it is essential that water is present and accessible. Mars may contain or provide signs of the possibility of near surface water, but this work will only focus on surface water for the purposes of simulation. In this paper, we present a method for autonomous navigation and detection of surface water bodies in the GPS denied environments of Mars via a fully autonomous UAV. A combination of existing state-of-the-art tools and techniques have been utilized to enable the development of this system. Additionally, we create a modular framework to simulate the mission using the AirSim simulation environment and the Robot Operating System (ROS). The simulation environment is leveraged by using the Unreal game engine running in Windows OS, interfacing with an open source software for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), running on ROS and Linux OS. A simulated mission was successfully implemented and demonstrated using the framework. Results obtained indicate that the framework enables the navigation of a UAV in the simulated Mars environment and allows the UAV to detect surface water bodies. The developed simulation framework, along with the knowledge and techniques attained in this research, could accelerate the development, testing and deployment of missions for a real-world Mars UAV, for the detection of surface water bodies. Additionally, this research aims to support and build upon prior work to further aid the search for water on other planets, as well as assisting humans in becoming a multi-planet species.