NASA Mars XR Competition Win!

We won a prize in the NASA Mars XR competition! 

Team ROGUE's "Dusty Rescue" scenario was one of the ten storyboards to win a prize in phase one of the NASA Mars XR competition. Here's the link to the HeroX competition web page:

https://www.herox.com/MarsXR/round/2812/entry/45842

Please vote for our entry if you can, but it requires a mobile number to ensure you only vote once.

To give some background to how the idea came about, I started out thinking about the dust on Mars and how much of an immersive experience this could be in VR.

The concept of a stuck MMSEV (Multi-Mission Surface Exploration Vehicle, or rover) followed on from reading about how Curiosity's wheels were destroyed by the Mars surface.

Image of Curiosity's wheel (c) NASA

Looking at the wheels on the MMSEV models that were included with the NASA XOSS simulator, I couldn't figure out how they attach, so I started doing some background research into NASA wheels in general and stumbled on this really interesting page:

[Reinventing the wheel]

This is a really fascinating page that goes through the wheels on everything from the Apollo Lunar Rovers to Curiosity and Perseverance. They go from spring tyres through to Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) wheels which retain their shape when being deformed rolling over Martian rocks. From this a plan was formed.

I built myself an SMA wheel in Blender, made it removable and put it into my storyboard.

However, the idea really started to gel when I started thinking though how the scenario would play out. If we assume that the rover is stuck and a dust storm is approaching, there are different options for how to proceed. The simplest is not to attempt a rescue, because, during my background reading on MMSEVs, I learnt that they are designed with enough life support for a 14 day mission with two crew. OK, so leaving them is a bit risky as storms can last for days or even months and they might be close to the end of their duration anyway. There was something I read that said a basic safety requirement is to have two rovers on missions so there is always a backup if one fails, and recommended a maximum of 18KM separation in case of breakdowns, hence the 18KM in the storyboard description. An MMSEV has a maximum speed of 10KPH, so this is a 2 hour rescue, or 4 hours for the round trip. We can then drive part in good visibility and part in bad visibility and compare driving times and styles to obtain performance metrics.

Assuming the rescue crew can find the other MMSEV in the dust, there are further options that dictate how the mission will play out. You can dock the two MMSEVs together, transfer everyone into the working vehicle and drive home fast as the storm worsens. This is a quick and easy option, but one that abandons the MMSEV and two space suits.

Docking two MMSEVs using the side ports

With four people working together, it should be possible to fix the second MMSEV, at which point everybody can drive home, with all people and assets recovered successfully. However, this will take time, which must be balanced against how the dust storm is progressing.

Fixing a wheel - OK, that's really a drill, but I was in a hurry

It might even be necessary to use a tow rope to pull the other MMSEV out of its dust trap.

Pulling your friend out of the crater

This gives us the other option, which is the middle ground. Rather than fix the MMSEV, why not just tow it back? This will obviously take longer than two driving together at 10KPH, but does recover all assets without any potentially lengthy wheel replacement.

Towing a broken MMSEV back home

Towing also provides a good test of two crews working together using comms between the two vehicles.

Now we just need to make this into a playable VR game, which is going to depend on how well we handle the dust special effects.

With dust obscuring the view

Without the dust - look at the MMSEV

As you can see from the images above, you can't see a whole lot from the MMSEV windows when you're driving in dust, and that's a fairly minor bit of dust.

It was quite funny when I was experimenting with some of the dust storm scripts that we've been given in the project. I couldn't get the large dust storm one to do anything, so went off to explore another part of the planet. Then I looked over my shoulder and went, "what the $!?#@& is that!".

It's behind you!

That's what you call a large dust storm. It just takes a while to build up and when you're in it, visibility is next to zero. Navigating in that level of visibility is a challenge.

Interestingly, compasses won't work on Mars because Mars does not have a global magnetic field, so all navigation is either by line of sight, or satellite based.

So that's our how our idea came about and we now have 3 months to make it into a VR simulation and submit it for phase 2. We've got some other really cool ideas to add to this too, but that would be telling...

Everybody's back home safely...