Related papers: Intelligent Unmanned Explorer for Deep Space Explo…
Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Manipulators (UAMs) have shown promising potentials to transform passive sensing missions into active 3-dimension interactive missions, but they still suffer from some difficulties impeding their wide…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have received much attention in recent years due to its wide range of applications, such as exploration of an unknown environment to acquire a 3D map without prior knowledge of it. Existing exploration methods have…
The concept of putting a neutrino detector in close orbit of the sun has been unexplored until very recently. The primary scientific return is to vastly enhance our understanding of the solar interior, which is a major NASA goal.…
Interstellar radar is a potential intermediate step between passive observation of exoplanets and interstellar exploratory missions. Compared to passive observation, it has the traditional advantages of radar astronomy. It can measure…
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 exploration of unknown environments has been widely applied in inspection, surveillance, and search and rescue. In exploration task, the basic requirement for robots is to detect the unknown space as fast as possible. In this…
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected in the Main Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions. They are also time capsules of the early Solar System making them valuable for…
A rapid accumulation of observations and interpretation have followed in the wake of 1I `Oumuamua's passage through the inner Solar System. We briefly outline the consequences that this first detection of an interstellar asteroid implies…
This paper presents a novel approach to modeling curiosity in a mobile robot, which is useful for monitoring and adaptive data collection tasks, especially in the context of long term autonomous missions where pre-programmed missions are…
The large distances involved in interstellar travel require a high degree of spacecraft autonomy, realized by artificial intelligence. The breadth of tasks artificial intelligence could perform on such spacecraft involves maintenance, data…
Leveraging advancements in micro-scale technology, we propose a fleet of autonomous, low-cost, small solar sails for interplanetary exploration. The Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project aims to utilize small-scale…
This work establishes COMPRA, a compact and reactive autonomy framework for fast deployment of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) in subterranean Search-and-Rescue (SAR) missions. A COMPRA-enabled MAV is able to autonomously explore previously…
Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…
Earth's magnetosphere is vital for today's technologically dependent society. To date, numerous design studies have been conducted and over a dozen science missions have own to study the magnetosphere. However, a majority of these solutions…
The adoption of self-driving cars will certainly revolutionize our lives, even though they may take more time to become fully autonomous than initially predicted. The first vehicles are already present in certain cities of the world, as…
Exploration of unknown, unstructured environments, such as in search and rescue, cave exploration, and planetary missions,presents significant challenges due to their unpredictable nature. This unpredictability can lead to inefficient path…
Autonomous exploration requires robots to generate informative trajectories iteratively. Although sampling-based methods are highly efficient in unmanned aerial vehicle exploration, many of these methods do not effectively utilize the…
This article introduces XPLORER, a passive deformable UAV with a spring-augmented chassis and proprioceptive state awareness, designed to endure collisions and maintain smooth contact. We develop a fast-converging external force estimation…
The following paper reviews recent developments in the field of optimization of space robotics. The extent of focus of this paper is on the perception (robotic sense of analyzing surroundings) in space robots in the exploration of…
Mini-EUSO is a UV telescope that will look downwards to the Earth's atmosphere onboard the International Space Station. With the design of the ultra-high energy cosmic ray fluorescence detectors belonging to the JEM-EUSO program, it will…