Novelty Detection in Multispectral Images
“Mastcam” is a pair of multispectral, color CCD imagers mounted on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover’s mast. Scientists typically have less than 12 hours after data is received from the rover to plan follow-up observations, and will have at most 5 hours for Mastcam-Z on Mars 2020. There is a need for systems that can rapidly and intelligently extract information from Mastcam and other science instrument data to prioritize potential discoveries and avoid missed science opportunities. We are continously developing a novelty detection system called Selections based on Autoencoder Modeling of Multispectral Image Expectations (SAMMIE) that focuses scientists’ attention on the most promising observations and provides explanations for its detections. Co-investigators: Dr. Danika Wellington (ASU), Dr. Kiri Wagstaff (JPL), Samantha Jacob (ASU), Dr. Jim Bell (ASU), Dr. Heni Ben Amor (ASU). This work is funded in part by a NASA STTR grant (PI: Dr. Chiman Kwan, Applied Research LLC) and in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and funded through the Internal Strategic University Research Partnerships (SURP) program. Read the research article here.