Vision and Image Processing

This chapter addresses components, sensors, software, and visual cues that are important to fulfill the needs of robotic activities on the surface of planets, asteroids, comets and moons. The main users of robotic vision solutions are planetary rovers, landers and astronauts. The chapter shows that various passive vision sensor technologies have been successfully implemented in more than a dozen robotic planetary missions, while active vision such as laser ranging has not been emphasized but is envisaged a growing field for specific application and environment such as lunar poles. It also sheds some light on robotic use cases envisaged in the future that will be served by vision, such as science autonomy, soil characterization for locomotion monitoring and planning, search for a deposited sample cache, or the monitoring of robotic service and construction tasks. New techniques and use cases such as vision supported by saliency models, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics vision are underway.