Autonomous Robotics is Driving Perseverance Rover’s Progress on Mars

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is making unprecedented use of Robotic Autonomy to achieve its mission goals. During its first two years of operation, the self-driving Autonomous Navigation system (AutoNav) has been used to evaluate 88.7% of its 17.7km distance travelled, more than any other Mars mission. AutoNav has set multiple Planetary Rover records, including greatest distance driven without human review (699.9m) and greatest single-day drive distance (347.7m). The Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science system (AEGIS) provides the science team with targeted mineralogy knowledge right after a drive into unknown terrain, without requiring ground-in-the-loop processing to select scientifically interesting targets. And a new OnBoard Planner (OBP) scheduling capability planned for operational use in August 2023 has the potential to reduce energy usage by up to 20%, and complete drive and arm-contact science campaigns in 25% fewer days on Mars. This paper presents the AutoNav, AEGIS, and OBP capabilities used on Perseverance, and compares them against similar systems deployed on other missions.