Field Geology with a Wearable Computer: First Results of the Cyborg Astrobiologist System

TL;DR

This paper reports on the initial field tests of the Cyborg Astrobiologist, a wearable computer system with computer vision designed to autonomously identify and analyze interesting geological features in real-time.

Contribution

It introduces a wearable computer-vision system for autonomous geological exploration and evaluates its performance in real-world field conditions.

Findings

System reliably functions in the field

Algorithms can identify interesting points in geological scenes

Future improvements include handling shadows, microtexture, and zoom control

Abstract

We present results from the first geological field tests of the `Cyborg Astrobiologist', which is a wearable computer and video camcorder system that we are using to test and train a computer-vision system towards having some of the autonomous decision-making capabilities of a field-geologist. The Cyborg Astrobiologist platform has thus far been used for testing and development of these algorithms and systems: robotic acquisition of quasi-mosaics of images, real-time image segmentation, and real-time determination of interesting points in the image mosaics. The hardware and software systems function reliably, and the computer-vision algorithms are adequate for the first field tests. In addition to the proof-of-concept aspect of these field tests, the main result of these field tests is the enumeration of those issues that we can improve in the future, including: dealing with structural shadow and microtexture, and also, controlling the camera's zoom lens in an intelligent manner. Nonetheless, despite these and other technical inadequacies, this Cyborg Astrobiologist system, consisting of a camera-equipped wearable-computer and its computer-vision algorithms, has demonstrated its ability of finding genuinely interesting points in real-time in the geological scenery, and then gathering more information about these interest points in an automated manner.