Related papers: Intelligent Unmanned Explorer for Deep Space Explo…
In this paper, we present a user-friendly planetary rover's control system for low latency surface telerobotic. Thanks to the proposed system, an operator can comfortably give commands through the control base station to a rover using…
Interstellar objects (ISOs) are small bodies that can travel through our solar system from other star systems. When present in our solar system, they represent an opportunity to study the properties and origins of these objects, as well as…
Performing rescuing and surveillance operations with autonomous ground and aerial vehicles become more and more apparent task. Involving unmanned robot systems allows making these operations more efficient, safe and reliable especially in…
I review those properties of the interstellar medium within 15 light-years of the Sun which will be relevant for the planning of future rapid ($v /ge 0.1c$) interstellar space missions to the nearest stars. As the detailed properties of the…
Remote sample recovery is a rapidly evolving application of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) for planetary sciences and space exploration. Development of cyber-physical systems (CPS) for autonomous deployment and recovery of sensor…
For real-world applications, autonomous mobile robotic platforms must be capable of navigating safely in a multitude of different and dynamic environments with accurate and robust localization being a key prerequisite. To support further…
The purpose of this paper is to re-open from a practical perspective the question of the extent in altitude of the Earth's biosphere. We make a number of different suggestions for how searches for biological material could be conducted in…
The process of scientific discovery relies on an interplay of observations, analysis, and hypothesis generation. Machine learning is increasingly being adopted to address individual aspects of this process. However, it remains an open…
THESEUS is a space mission concept, currently under Phase A study by ESA as candidate M5 mission, aiming at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and…
CubeSats offer a flexible and low-cost option to increase the scientific and technological return of small-body exploration missions. ESA's Hera mission, the European component of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA)…
A close partnership between people and partially autonomous machines has enabled decades of space exploration. But to further expand our horizons, our systems must become more capable. Increasing the nature and degree of autonomy - allowing…
As the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) fulfills its primary mission it is executing an unprecedented all-sky survey with the potential to discover distant planets in our own solar system, as well as hundreds of…
This paper contributes a novel strategy for semantics-aware autonomous exploration and inspection path planning. Attuned to the fact that environments that need to be explored often involve a sparse set of semantic entities of particular…
Many unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance and monitoring applications require observations at precise locations over long periods of time, ideally days or weeks at a time (e.g. ecosystem monitoring), which has been impractical due to…
Robust evidence suggests that humans explore their environment using a combination of topological landmarks and coarse-grained path integration. This approach relies on identifiable environmental features (topological landmarks) in tandem…
Future missions to Mars and Venus will make use of aerobraking and aerocapture in order to gain mass through the saving of fuel at planetary arrival. So far only aerobraking has been demonstrated, if the Mars Premier project has paved the…
NASA and ESA are preparing a series of human exploration missions using the four-person Orion crew vehicle, launched by NASA's Space Launch System, and a Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) that enable long duration (>30 days)…
Efficient exploration strategies are vital in tasks such as search-and-rescue missions and disaster surveying. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become particularly popular in such applications, promising to cover large areas at high…
Heterogeneous teams of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can enhance the exploration capabilities of aerial robots by exploiting different strengths and abilities of varying UAVs. This paper presents a novel method for exploring unknown…
This study evaluates a technique for determining the mass of a potentially hazardous asteroid from a high-speed flyby in the context of a rapid reconnaissance planetary defense scenario. We consider a host spacecraft that dispenses a small…