Phase II Final Report - NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts

Planetary Exploration Using Biomimetics
An Entomopter for Flight on Mars
ment. If the acquired payload data needs to be transmitted to Earth, the refueling rover will
server as a high power relay once the data has been captured from the Entomopter.
The advantages of the rover-centric navigation approach are thus:
• No a priori knowledge of topography required,
• Rover bears the weight of the system,
• No energy radiated by Entomopter,
• Inherent beacon for homing,
• Extended range, and
• Doubles as communication system.
4.3 Entomopter-borne Active Emitters for Navigation
and Communication
Figure 4-5: Conceptual View of Communications/
Control Subsystem Functionality
A second option was explored in which
various emitters are placed on the Entomopters
to enable longer range operation
and non-line-of-sight flight relative
to the refueling rover. There are very
strict requirements of low weight, minimum
power consumption and small size
for the Entomopter onboard system.
Given these restrictions, as mentioned
above it is beneficial to utilize the rover
to perform as much of the required
functionality as possible, and to utilize
power as efficiently as possible. However,
it may not be possible to perform
some of the required functions with the
rover, making it necessary to utilize a
multifunctional communications/control
subsystem on-board the Entomopter.
In the following sections, the feasibility and required power levels are explored for
using onboard active emitters to accomplish communications, positioning, collision avoidance,
and altimetry, as well as some remote sensing applications. A conceptual view of Entomopter
communications, positioning relative to the rover, obstacle detection and altimetry is shown in
Figure 4-5.
4.3.1 Assumptions and Performance Goals
The following assumptions were used as initial performance goals for the communications/control
subsystem analyses. Figure 4-6 shows a side view of the Entomopter illustrating the
assumed coordinate system.
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Phase II Final Report