Mars Rovers - software

I just found on the JPL website that you can download the software
they will use to control the rovers. They say in the future real data
from the rovers will be provided and can be loaded into the program.

http://mars.telascience.org/home/

"The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released Maestro, a public version
of the primary software tool used by NASA scientists to operate the
Mars Exploration Rovers. Anyone can download Maestro for free from
http://mars.telascience.org/ and use it to follow along with the
rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view
pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity
plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro
containing the latest images from Mars."

In article , dlp_79
@yahoo.com says...
I just found on the JPL website that you can download the software
they will use to control the rovers. They say in the future real data
from the rovers will be provided and can be loaded into the program.

http://mars.telascience.org/home/

"The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released Maestro, a public version
of the primary software tool used by NASA scientists to operate the
Mars Exploration Rovers. Anyone can download Maestro for free from
http://mars.telascience.org/ and use it to follow along with the
rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view
pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity
plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro
containing the latest images from Mars."



Very Very cool!!!

Vamp

On a sunny day (3 Jan 2004 00:13:33 -0800) it happened
(Peterson, David) wrote in :

I just found on the JPL website that you can download the software
they will use to control the rovers. They say in the future real data
from the rovers will be provided and can be loaded into the program.

http://mars.telascience.org/home/

"The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released Maestro, a public version
of the primary software tool used by NASA scientists to operate the
Mars Exploration Rovers. Anyone can download Maestro for free from
http://mars.telascience.org/ and use it to follow along with the
rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view
pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity
plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro
containing the latest images from Mars."

OK I downloaded the Linux version last night (I am in Europe),
realizing after it turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour download on a V90 modem,
that I really must be confident that lander worked this time....

Anyways it is based on java rle, the install script has some errors,
so you can not run it as the indicated executable,
but I had to run it as (I untarred it in /video/compile/maestro/ )
/video/compile/maestro/R2004_01-Public-Linux/JPL/SAP/bin/WITS
while 'SAP', that should start it (in /usr/local/bin), points to
SAP - /video/compile/maestro/R2004_01-Public-Linux/WITS

So directory JPL/bin is missing from the softlink in /usr/local/bin
Also the install script 'forgets' to do
tar -xvf mer.tar
in
/video/compile/maestro/R2004_01-Public-Linux/JPL/SAP/WITS-db
so that you actually see some data.
Because of java (likely) the thing is slower then a dead snail glued with
superglue to a scrapped Apollo.
I followed the intro to the point where it had to move to a target, then it
froze with this message in the console:

An unexpected exception has been detected in native code outside the VM.
Unexpected Signal : 11 occurred at PC=0x400C32F7
Function=memcpy+0x27
Library=/lib/libc.so.6

Current Java thread:


****************
Another exception has been detected while we were handling last error.
Dumping information about last error:
ERROR REPORT FILE = (N/A)
PC = 0x0x400c32f7
SIGNAL = 11
FUNCTION NAME = memcpy
OFFSET = 0x27
LIBRARY NAME = /lib/libc.so.6
Please check ERROR REPORT FILE for further information, if there is any.
Good bye.


So, I am glad the guys at JPL did a good job on the mars lander, and I just
did see the first pics in the news.
Congratulations.
But THIS piece of software needs some more work IMO.

Jan Panteltje writes:

So, I am glad the guys at JPL did a good job on the mars lander, and I just
did see the first pics in the news.
Congratulations.
But THIS piece of software needs some more work IMO.

Tested this on Debian GNU/Linux Woody (I did an installation right into
my home directory, as suggested by the installer), worked without any
problems while stepping through the introduction. Apart from being
fscking slow it did not run into any crashes yet. Eating about 400MB of
memory for what it does seems a bit odd, though. The 3D views of the
site are quite cool nevertheless. This view seems to be generated by
mapping textures from the navcams/hazcams (?) onto a 3D grid of the
surroundings which is a quite cool way of exploring the terrain.

I hope they make real (Mars) data/pictures available soon, driving
around the JPL rover test faculties gets boring fast ;-) This may well
be the only way to see pictures of that facility, though.

For the curious souls out there here is a screenshot of the app:
http://joh.revier.com/images/maestro.jpg


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take
away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery