Gerhard Paar is head of the research group Machine Vision Applications(MVA) and is Lead Co-Investigator for 3D Vision for the European ExoMars 2020 Rover mission instrument Pancam. In this role, he succeeded to bring the annual PanCam science- team meeting to Graz which took place in the premises of JOANNEUM RESEARCH Institute DIGITAL.
The joint ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Rover Mission is scheduled for launch 2020 and landing on the Red Planet in 2021 to search for signs of past and present life on Mars with the help of a panoramic imaging system (PanCam), mounted on the Rover Mast.
Three dimensional (3D) PanCam vision processing is an essential component of mission planning and scientific data analysis. Such processing is currently developed by the PanCam 3D Vision Team under JOANNEUM RESEARCH coordination.
The supporting program of the meeting also included a visit to the MVA image processing laboratory, with a presentation of applications in industrial image processing by Gerhard Jakob.
The participant list included PanCam Principal Investigator Andrew Coates from MSSL (UK), Co-PI Ralf Jaumann (DLR), and representatives of Aberystwyth University (UK), Space Exploration Institute (CH), VRVis (AT), Open University (UK), Western University (CAN) und University of Oxford (UK).