CMU MHCI '04
Project Overview
Introduction | MI
Planning | MER
The Science Activity Planner ReDesign was a Masters of HCI Capstone Project which was carried out during the summer and spring semesters of 2004. Our client for the project was NASA Ames Research Laboratory HCI Division and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The project involved redesigning the planning software scientists at NASA are currently using for both the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers.
Project Focus
The redesign goals arise from the breakdowns we have identified within the
current MER mission, the functionality desired by the SAP development team,
and the current assumptions about future planetary exploration missions. The
redesign should satisfy the following goals
- support a science planning process which requires distributed collaboration
- address the breakdowns within the science planning process we observed during MER
- integrate the functionality of the Constraint Editor into SAP in order to provide the scientists with the ability to encode all of the necessary constraints onto their activities
- provide the scientists with the ability to interactively plan within the Martian environment.
Our intention is to provide the scientists who will interact with future robotic planetary explorers with a tool to collaborate during distributed operations, to track and review science data, and to create and constrain rover activities in an interactive environment, capturing and conveying their intent for successful remote science operations.
Timeline
The project consisted of two main phases: (1) data gathering in the spring semester and (2) design and iterative user-testing in the summer semester.
