Related papers: A GNC Architecture for Planetary Rovers with Auton…
The recent growing interest in small solar system bodies such as asteroids and comets for scientific inspection, exploitation of resources, and planetary defense reasons is pushing the development of innovative engineering solutions to…
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) remains challenging for a number of downstream applications, such as visual robot navigation, because of rapid turns, featureless walls, and poor camera quality. We introduce the Differentiable…
Path planning and collision avoidance are challenging in complex and highly variable environments due to the limited horizon of events. In literature, there are multiple model- and learning-based approaches that require significant…
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…
We consider the problem of autonomous mobile robot exploration in an unknown environment, taking into account a robot's coverage rate, map uncertainty, and state estimation uncertainty. This paper presents a novel exploration framework for…
In this paper, we propose an integrated framework for the autonomous robotic exploration in indoor environments. Specially, we present a hybrid map, named Semantic Road Map (SRM), to represent the topological structure of the explored…
Due to the inability to receive signals from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in extreme conditions, achieving accurate and robust navigation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a challenging task. Recently emerged,…
Exploration of terrestrial planets such as Mars are conducted using orbiters, landers and rovers. Cameras and instruments onboard orbiters have enabled global mapping of Mars at low spatial resolution. Landers and rovers such as the Mars…
Future planetary exploration rovers must operate for extended durations on hybrid power inputs that combine steady radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) output with variable solar photovoltaic (PV) availability. While energy-aware…
Accurate localization is crucial for water robotics, yet traditional onboard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) approaches are difficult or ineffective due to signal reflection on the water's surface and its high cost of aquatic GNSS…
We propose a new method for autonomous navigation in uneven terrains by utilizing a sparse Gaussian Process (SGP) based local perception model. The SGP local perception model is trained on local ranging observation (pointcloud) to learn the…
Rectilinear forms of snake-like robotic locomotion are anticipated to be an advantage in obstacle-strewn scenarios characterizing urban disaster zones, subterranean collapses, and other natural environments. The elongated, laterally-narrow…
Rover localization is one of the perquisites for large scale rover exploration. In NASA's Mars 2020 mission, the Ingenuity helicopter is carried together with the rover, which is capable of obtaining high-resolution imagery of Mars terrain,…
Robotic and human lunar landings are a focus of future NASA missions. Precision landing capabilities are vital to guarantee the success of the mission, and the safety of the lander and crew. During the approach to the surface there are…
Robotic airships offer significant advantages in terms of safety, mobility, and extended flight times. However, their highly restrictive weight constraints pose a major challenge regarding the available computational resources to perform…
Terrain assessment is a key aspect for autonomous exploration rovers, surrounding environment recognition is required for multiple purposes, such as optimal trajectory planning and autonomous target identification. In this work we present a…
We present a novel trajectory traversability estimation and planning algorithm for robot navigation in complex outdoor environments. We incorporate multimodal sensory inputs from an RGB camera, 3D LiDAR, and the robot's odometry sensor to…
This paper presents a novel method for qualitative mapping of large scale spaces. The proposed framework makes use of a graphical representation of the world in order to build a map consisting of qualitative constraints on the geometric…
Spacecraft and drones aimed at exploring our solar system are designed to operate in conditions where the smart use of onboard resources is vital to the success or failure of the mission. Sensorimotor actions are thus often derived from…
Generative navigation policies have made rapid progress in improving end-to-end learned navigation. Despite their promising results, this paradigm has two structural problems. First, the sampled trajectories exist in an abstract, unscaled…