OVERVIEW
Mars Rover X
Kelvin is dedicated to building an AI platform that works with any sensors, including ones used in Mars expeditions. I designed a Martian Rover Operation dashboard that displays real-time data and overall system health, quickly identifies trouble area and system risks, and maintains peak operational efficiency.
Problem
Short Lifespan
The main goal of the rovers on Mars is to search for water or the past water activities because scientists believe that water equals to life. Due to limited electrical power and harsh environmental conditions on Mars, rover missions are usually set to be a certain amount of time. If we could send multiple rovers to Mars and improve the work efficiency, we could get more valuable data with limited time and energy.
Assumptions
Assumptions Made
about Mars Rover X
Launching during 7/17/2025 ~ 8/24/2025
Landing on 2/18/2026
Rover mission duration: 90 sols
Landing sites temperature: -96° Celsius to 71° Celsius
Nasa has sent 4 rovers to the Mars so far. With the help of SpaceX, NASA can send multiple rovers to Mars at the mission 2050.
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Temperate
Rovers have to maintain its temperature between -40° Celsius to +40° Celsius to function well. A thermal switch would automatically activate or deactivate heaters to ensure the body temperature isn't too cold or too hot.
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Battery Usage
A rover needs at least 100 watts to operate and requires extra to conduct more work. Besides its primary source of power that comes from the Sun, there are eight Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) constantly generating 1-watt power, which provides enough electrical power when the solar panels receive less sunlight.
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Speed and Velocity
The rover has a top speed on flat hard ground of 5 centimeters per second. For safe drive, rovers will drive for 10 seconds and stop to analyze for 20 seconds. The average speed is about 1 centimeter per second
Technical constraints
Data Acquisition
It is crucial to have a quick check-in with engineers on project execution. The discussion could be around how to receive data while considering the different transmission methods between Mars and Earth.
User Behavior
Qualitative Research
It is hard to interview the Aerospace Engineerings about their life at NASA. So I decided to watch related documentaries, interviews and TED talks to understand what their needs are:
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Mars Watch
Due to the 40-minute time difference between the Earth and Mars, engineers who work for Mars rovers start working 40 minute later than the previous day every day. Engineers are equipped with Mars Watch to know what time it is on Mars to communicate with Mars rovers smoothly. So in my design, I had the Mars time on top of the ineterface.
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Night Shift
Mars rovers are just like human; they work during the day and sleep to recovery at night. When rovers sleep, engineers assign tasks for them to work during the day. So engineers are working on a night shift on Mars time. Some of the engineers mentioned that they have to pull the blinds down and dim the lights to pretend that they work during the night to avoid distraction from their real life on Earth. Because of that, I chose a dark color palette to provide an immersive user experience.
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Maritian Lanuage
It is hard to figure out what "tomorrow" means if you work on a Mars rover mission because your co-worker doesn't know if you are talking about the tomorrow on the Earth or Mars. To avoid the ambiguity, engineers use sol(day); tosol(today); yestersol(yesterday), and so forth. In the design, I used the Martian language on the dashboard for users to communicate better with Mars rovers.
Design
Main Features
Application dashboard of real-time data
Multi-device management
Quickly identify trouble area and system risks
Suggestions
Flows
There are two main workflows in this project: set up and inspect. As for the initial set up, operation engineers can create a rule and add single/multiple rovers to the rule. After that, users can delete or edit the rule. The second flow is the inspection. The dashboard shows data overview, and users can click on one device to see its detailed information.
Explorations
I sketched out a few options and listed out all the pros and cons, and edge cases for each. I decided to move forward with the option because it's easy for users to view, spot risks, and take actions.
Task One: Set Up
Because there is no sensor data set up by default, so users have to manually import data. In my design, users can add rules to one or multiple rovers at the same time.
Task Two: Inspect
The dashboard gives an overview of temperature, power, velocity, and health issue index based on the rules previously set up by engineers. Users can rank the list based on their needs, and they could click on one rover to see its detail information, including, data detail, alerts, reasoning, and suggestions. Both overview and details were designed on one page so users could quickly check the system health and take essential actions. They don't have to go to different pages to check and compare, and of course, users can go the analytics pages to see the history data and pattern.
Final THOUGHTS
More Research
And Industry Knowledge
The most exciting part of this project was to use my imagination to design the future Mars rover and how we could contribute to the mission of Martian immigration. However, designs shouldn't be based on imaginations and limited knowledge of physical products. If I had more time on this project, I would like to figure out how the combination of smart sensor and AI actually work in the aerospace industry and then conduct thorough qualitative research by observing and interviewing the engineers who are working for this mission.
