Research On Realistic Digital Lunar Surface Modeling Based On Lunar Characters

More than half a century, lunar exploration has been a fierce competition in scientific research field all over the world. Lunar exploration needs lunar rover achieve a soft landing and carry out detailed exploration in a rather large area. This will lay a foundation for landing man on the moon and establishing lunar base.The emergence of Virtual Reality technology provides a new efficient approach for lunar rover testing,optimizing etc. It is meaningful for research to construct a realistic virtual lunar surface which contains a number of topographical features. This chapter which bases on the Shanghai Aerospace Bureau and the Shanghai Jiaotong University cooperation projects as the background has constructed realistic virtual lunar surface according to the environmental features of moon and successfully applied to the simulation.Firstly, researches creating technology for 3D terrain. Discussed the mathematics model and the basic character of the fBm(Fractional Brownian Motion) in detial, introduce several common fBm generation algorithms. According to the idea of random midpoint displacement(RMPD), using "Diamond-Square"algorithms generated the base of lunar terrain.Secondly, base on the experience of calculation before got the similar method to generate the craters. At the same time,using triangle MPD generated several types of fractal stones. According to the real statistical data, added the two types main features of the moon surface to the base of lunar terrain reasonably.Next, researches rendering technology for the terrain.In light of the actual situation of the subjects, set light, materials, texture mapping, shadow effects on the lunar surface.Finally, combinating MultiGen Creator software and SGI OpenGL Performer v3.2 software on the Visual C++ 6.0 platform created a realistic paramererized virtual lunar terrain which could be converted to a variety of file formats for the simulation test.The simulation test shows that the lunar terrain created in this paper comply with the actual statistics and physical laws, which can verify and assess the capabilities of lunar rover, such as kinematic,dynamic, stability, the ability of avoiding obstacle and etc. So, the lunar terrain satisfies the need of simulation in the virtual environment.