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Mapless navigation has emerged as a promising approach for enabling autonomous robots to navigate in environments where pre-existing maps may be inaccurate, outdated, or unavailable. In this work, we propose an image-based local…
Conventional algorithms in autonomous exploration face challenges due to their inability to accurately and efficiently identify the spatial distribution of convex regions in the real-time map. These methods often prioritize navigation…
The ability to determine the pose of a rover in an inertial frame autonomously is a crucial capability necessary for the next generation of surface rover missions on other planetary bodies. Currently, most on-going rover missions utilize…
Efficient exploration and mapping in unknown indoor environments is a fundamental challenge, with high stakes in time-critical settings. In current systems, robot perception remains confined to line-of-sight; occluded regions remain unknown…
In robot navigation, generalizing quickly to unseen environments is essential. Hierarchical methods inspired by human navigation have been proposed, typically consisting of a high-level landmark proposer and a low-level controller. However,…
Martian subsurface habitability and astrobiology can be evaluated via a lava tube cave, without drilling. MACIE addresses two key goals of the Decadal Survey (2013-2022) and three MEPAG goals. New advances in robotic architectures,…
In-pipe robots are promising solutions for condition assessment, leak detection, water quality monitoring in a variety of other tasks in pipeline networks. Smart navigation is an extremely challenging task for these robots as a result of…
Exploration of unknown environments is a fundamental problem in robotics and an essential component in numerous applications of autonomous systems. A major challenge in exploring unknown environments is that the robot has to plan with the…
Autonomous terrain classification is an important problem in planetary navigation, whether the goal is to identify scientific sites of interest or to traverse treacherous areas safely. Past Martian rovers have relied on human operators to…
Many scenarios require a robot to be able to explore its 3D environment online without human supervision. This is especially relevant for inspection tasks and search and rescue missions. To solve this high-dimensional path planning problem,…
The general profile and overarching goal of this proposed mission is to pioneer potentially highly beneficial (even vital) and cost-effective techniques for the future human colonization of Mars. Adopting radically new and disruptive…
Aerial outdoor semantic navigation requires robots to explore large, unstructured environments to locate target objects. Recent advances in semantic navigation have demonstrated open-set object-goal navigation in indoor settings, but these…
Many environments, such as unvisited planetary surfaces and oceanic regions, remain unexplored due to a lack of prior knowledge. Autonomous vehicles must sample upon arrival, process data, and either transmit findings to a teleoperator or…
An autonomous indoor aerial vehicle requires reliable simul- taneous localization and mapping (SLAM), accurate flight control, and robust path planning for navigation. This paper presents a system level combination of these existing…
Mountain slopes are perfect examples of harsh environments in which humans are required to perform difficult and dangerous operations such as removing unstable boulders, dangerous vegetation or deploying safety nets. A good replacement for…
High-speed legged navigation in discrete and geometrically complex environments is a challenging task because of the high-degree-of-freedom dynamics and long-horizon, nonconvex nature of the optimization problem. In this work, we propose a…
Exploration is a critical challenge in robotics, centered on understanding unknown environments. In this work, we focus on robots exploring structured indoor environments which are often predictable and composed of repeating patterns. Most…
In addition to conventional ground rovers, the Mars 2020 mission will send a helicopter to Mars. The copter's high-resolution data helps the rover to identify small hazards such as steps and pointy rocks, as well as providing rich textual…
The Artemis program requires robotic and crewed lunar rovers for resource prospecting and exploitation, construction and maintenance of facilities, and human exploration. These rovers must support navigation for 10s of kilometers (km) from…
In unstructured environments the best path is not always the shortest, but needs to consider various objectives like energy efficiency, risk of failure or scientific outcome. This paper proposes a global planner, based on the A* algorithm,…