Autonomous System: The Main Reason Behind NASA’s Ingenuity Success

NASA experienced the Wright brothers' moment recently, thanks to its successful autonomous helicopter that landed on the surface of the red planet, Mars. 'Ingenuity,' the Mars vehicle became the first rotorcraft to land on another planet. It was a totally autonomous flight piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Ingenuity rose to three-meter height and managed to be airborne for 40 seconds, but the achievement was very remarkable as making the rotorcraft fly was the main aim of NASA scientists. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars. The flight is very special and marks a milestone to space explorations as the distance between the main systems and the autonomous working model is very void. Data must be sent to and returned from the red planet over hundreds of millions of miles using orbiting satellites and NASA's Deep Space Network. Therefore, Ingenuity cannot be flown with a joystick, and its flight was not observable from Earth in real time.

The rotorcraft had a lot of autonomy to make its own decisions about how to fly to a waypoint and keep itself warm. Ingenuity flew autonomously using a gyroscope, accelerometer, camera, altimeter, and the onboard computer. The autonomous system developed for the helicopter used cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, which helped engineer better light-weight and efficient drones on the Earth for delivering medicines, transporting organs for transport, and others. Ingenuity also carries a feature to autonomously charge itself with solar panels.

Making Ingenuity fly on Mars was a tough job. Unlike Earth, Mars has significantly lower gravity (one-third of Earth's) and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules that make it tough for any substance to fly. But scientists made the wings of Ingenuity very light. They were able to make over 2,500 revolutions per minute that helped the rotorcraft achieve flight.

Ingenuity was carried to Mars by Perseverance, the space rover that touched the red planet's surface on February 18. The success of Ingenuity has opened the door to other robotic flying vehicles that might be included in the future robotic and human mission to Mars. This could extend humans research on the neighboring planet, providing high-definition images and reconnaissance for robots and humans.