OWLAT: The Evolution of an Advanced Lander-Manipulator Testbed for Enabling Autonomy Development for Ocean Worlds Missions

NASA has developed platforms for evaluating autonomy technologies for lander-based robotic sampling missions to Ocean Worlds. Mission concepts that propose operations at a further distance from Earth and under constrained resources will rely more heavily on robust autonomy capabilities for mission operations. The Ocean World Lander Autonomy Testbed (OWLAT) was built in an effort to bridge the gap between autonomous technologies emerging from academia and industry, and the specific demands of lander-style mission operations. OWLAT provides a facility for testing technologies against the authentic challenges of autonomous operations in low-gravity environments. Purposefully designed to limit the implementation overhead, the testbed provides telemetry logging from the system and an adaptable interface for commanding by leveraging an open-source middle-ware suite. This paper presents the capabilities of the OWLAT testbed, a review of deployments of autonomous technologies on the testbed, and lessons learned from developing a high-fidelity, versatile testbed that facilitates the advancement of technology readiness level (TRL) for preconfigured autonomous operation solutions.