The Cyborg Astrobiologist: First Field Experience
<|reference_start|>The Cyborg Astrobiologist: First Field Experience: 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 and field-astrobiologist. 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: first, detection and accounting for shadows caused by 3D jagged edges in the outcrop; second, reincorporation of more sophisticated texture-analysis algorithms into the system; third, creation of hardware and software capabilities to control the camera's zoom lens in an intelligent manner; and fourth, development of algorithms for interpretation of complex geological scenery. Nonetheless, despite these 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.<|reference_end|>
@article{mcguire2004the,
    title={The Cyborg Astrobiologist: First Field Experience},
    author={Patrick C. McGuire, Jens Ormo, Enrique Diaz-Martinez, Jose Antonio
  Rodriguez-Manfredi, Javier Gomez-Elvira, Helge Ritter, Markus Oesker, Joerg
  Ontrup, (Centro de Astrobiologia, Madrid; University of Bielefeld)},
    journal={Int.J.Astrobiol. 3 (2004) 189-207},
    year={2004},
    doi={10.1017/S147355040500220X},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/0410071},
    primaryClass={cs.CV astro-ph cs.AI cs.CE cs.HC cs.RO cs.SE q-bio.NC}
}